Socialism and 
Motherhood" 

hx \\l John Spargo 

546 

57 








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Book. 



Gopightft 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SOCIALISM 
AND MOTHERHOOD 



BY 
JOHN SPARGO 




NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 
1914 



r .m „ HX5-46 

Copyright, 1914, by 

B. W. HUEBSCH ^T 



w 



Printed in U. S. A. 

©CLA376585 

JUN27I9I4 



TO 
MY WIFE AND COMRADE 

MARY SPARGO 



FOREWORD 

BECAUSE I have written somewhat ex- 
tensively upon various phases of ma- 
ternity and child welfare, many Social- 
ist comrades, in various cities, asked me to 
lecture upon the relation of Socialism to 
Motherhood. 

In response to these invitations I delivered 
a lecture entitled " Socialism and Mother- 
hood " in many cities. The substance of the 
lecture somewhat amplified is contained in 
the following pages. It is my hope that the 
little book will make clear the promise of 
Socialism to many mothers and drive the fear 
of Socialism from their hearts and minds. 

J. s. 

" Nestledown," 

Old Bennington, Vt., 

End of October, 19 13. 



PROLOGUE 

OVER the Garden of Life dark clouds 
hang like a funeral pall. The sun is 
darkened. 
Through the garden sounds a moaning 
cry — the cry of children hungry of body 
and soul. They cry for Bread and Beauty, 
for Life and Love. 

Poor little flowers of the garden! They 
droop and fade for the blight of Poverty is 
upon them. 

A mother, broken-hearted, weeps because 
of the desolation of the garden. The beauty 
and pride of the flowers that glow like 
flaming torches amid the gloom of the gar- 
den do not comfort her. She sees only the 
drooping and fading flowers. 

• •••*.. 

But lo ! a Voice is heard in the garden. 
It speaks from the heart of a sunbeam: 

" I, Socialism, Spirit of Life and Progress, 
come bringing priceless gifts. 

7 



8 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

"Bread and Beauty I bring to the chil- 
dren. Life and Love to all the blossoms. 

"Freedom and Hope I bring to thee, O 
'Mother of Men, and to thy children Op- 
portunity, 



>> 



But the mother does not believe. Fear 
holds her in bondage to her grief. She 
weeps and will not be comforted. 

The Voice speaks again: 

"Fear not, O Mother of Men. I, too, 
am a mother. 

"I have borne all. I have mothered — 
/ have nourished Life with Hope. I have 
endured the Great Agony. 

"Fear me not: I am thy Sister/ 9 . . . 

Now the sun dispels the clouds and the 
Garden of Life is filled with rosy light. 

The drooping flowers lift their heads. 

The moaning cry is turned to laughter 
and song. 

The mother rises. The light of Hope is 
in her eyes. She walks blithely, like one in 
whose heart Faith is reborn. 



I 

THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 
i 

ONE of the great masterpieces of mod- 
ern sculpture is The Captive Mother, 
by Stephan Sinding, the Norwegian 
sculptor whose art unites to the weird 
witchery of Grieg's music the profound 
psychological insight of Ibsen's dramas. In 
The Captive Mother Sinding symbolizes 
the supreme tragedy of modern society, the 
Bondage of Motherhood. With her hands 
tied behind her back a young mother bends 
to the ground in agony of body in order 
that her baby may draw nourishment from 
her copious breasts. Despite her torturous 
posture, her face wears an expression of 
patient tenderness and resignation. 

Curiously enough, some have seen in 
Sinding's master-work nothing more than a 
glorification of maternal love and devotion. 
For them, the marble represents Mother- 
hood Triumphant, the strong love of the 

9 



io SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

mother overcoming all obstacles and bear- 
ing the fountain of life to her child. 

What a narrow and restricted interpre- 
tation! That Sinding intended thus to ex- 
alt and glorify motherhood may be freely 
granted, but he had another, larger purpose. 
With fine insight and inspiration he has 
carved in marble the gravest indictment of 
modern civilization, the bondage of the 
mother. Woman, mother and nourisher of 
the race is bound and hampered in the per- 
formance of her sublime function. She is 
bound to the debris of all the ages by po- 
litical, social and economic disabilities, by 
false conventions, useless duties and out- 
worn lies. Centuries of oppression and de- 
nial of freedom to develop limit and bind 
her and condemn her to nourish blindly and 
ignorantly the offspring which she as 
blindly and ignorantly bears. 

Amid the confusion and clamor occa- 
sioned by the world-wide uprising of woman 
demanding equal political and economic 
status with men, recognition of this relation 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS n 

of political and economic servitude to the 
limitations and degradation of motherhood 
makes itself felt. Through woman's loud 
protest vibrates her passionate yearning for 
liberation from all that stands in the way 
of her fulfillment of her divinest function, 
motherhood, with wisdom and joy. Her 
dream is not limited to the right to vote 
upon the same terms as men, or even to 
equality with man in the labor market. 
These are at best beginnings — they are 
the foundation stones upon which the free- 
dom of motherhood is to be built. 

Socialism appeals to the mother with pe- 
culiar force. It is the Liberator. At all 
times and in all places the Socialist move- 
ment has waged war against every political, 
social and economic disability of woman and 
proclaimed the gospel of her emancipation. 
With unfaltering courage and constancy it 
has proclaimed its faith that until woman 
is set free so that she can stand erect and 
unbound, free to achieve her highest and 
noblest aims, free to love and choose ma- 



12 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

ternal responsibilities with fullness of 
knowledge and power, the race-life can 
never attain its perfect blossoming, the Su- 
perman never be born* 

II 

Socialism appeals most strongly to the 
mother through its fundamental demand for 
the equalization of opportunity. Men do 
not see as vividly as women do, nor feel as 
keenly, the terrible injustice of unequal op- 
portunity in childhood, or the limitless suf- 
fering and wrong arising from it. A man 
may assent heartily, without reservation, to 
the Socialist demand for an equal chance for 
every child born into the world, but only 
in rare instances will he comprehend the 
full significance of the demand as readily 
as a woman will, especially if she be a 
mother. A mother will understand that 
the demand for equality of opportunity as 
the birthright of every child voices the most 
revolutionary aspiration ever born of hu- 
man hopes and nurtured by human hearts. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 13 

The claim for an equal chance for every 
child born into the world carries with it that 
most fundamental of claims, that every child 
has a right to be well-born into the world. 
And that ideal can never be realized until 
every mother-to-be is safeguarded by all 
the arts and resources of our civilization to 
the end that she may bring her baby into the 
world with joy — healthy of body, glad of 
heart, serene of soul, unafraid of the future, 
unterrified by want or the fear of it, secure 
in the consciousness that the child she bears 
is heir to all the riches and advantages of 
earth. 

It is sometimes charged that the demand 
for equality of opportunity is a modification 
of the revolutionary aim and temper of true, 
uncompromising Socialism. Nothing could 
be farther from the truth! So long as the 
Socialist movement unequivocally stands for 
that principle, and directs all its policies 
toward its realization, it will be revolution- 
ary, the incarnate voice of Social Revolu- 
tion. As so often happens, its simple, in- 



i 4 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

flexible justice gives to the demand a sweet 
reasonableness which induces many to 
assent to it lightly without any serious ex- 
amination of all that it involves. The 
witchery of words lures men on and on un- 
til they find themselves far beyond their 
depths in the great ocean of thought. Sim- 
ple as it may be to say, " I believe in an equal 
chance for every child born into the world," 
an intelligent understanding of all that the 
declaration implies would limit its acceptance 
to those who realize the necessity of a com- 
plete reconstruction of society. 

Ill 

We cannot separate the demand for 
equality of opportunity as the child's birth- 
right from the claim that every woman who 
assumes the peril, pain and responsibility of 
motherhood is entitled to all the care and 
protection which the collective power and 
knowledge of civilization make possible. 
With this as our standard of judgment, let 
us with full candor face the facts that are 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 15 

and then see if we cannot visualize in our 
imagination the facts which might be. — 

Upon the Avenue, in a home of refine- 
ment, beauty and comfort dwells a woman. 
She has never felt the bitterness of pov- 
erty, or the fear of it. She has never had 
to toil in weariness, fearful lest she lack 
food, raiment or shelter. As a child she 
was carefully nurtured and protected from 
every evil influence. She enjoyed her birth- 
right of play and laughter and song. No 
factory's gloom ever chilled her spirit, no 
harsh machines ever hushed her song with 
their angry clangor. Wisdom and love ten- 
derly watched and nurtured both her body 
and her mind, so that she grew into woman- 
hood strong and beautiful of body and 
mind. Thus we see her in her home, splen- 
didly equipped for motherhood, as every 
woman ought to be. 

When the sweet sense of dawning moth- 
erhood comes to her it comes as a beautiful 
dream. She does not contemplate with 
terror the thought that the Unborn nestling 



16 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

beneath her heart may have a childhood like 
unto her own. She looks to the future with 
serene confidence. She lives over again in 
memory her own happy childhood. 

As the critical days draw near, what in- 
finite resources she commands for her own 
peace and the welfare of the Unborn! 
What care is expended, what art employed, 
to shield her from danger, from weariness 
of body or distress of mind! And then, 
when the first low cry falls upon her ear like 
angel-music, no fear chills her heart. She 
rejoices in the consciousness that her child 
is heir to all the ages, that all the treasuries 
of art, of science, of beauty belong to it. 
She can say with the Psalmist: 

" The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places ; 
Yea, I have a goodly heritage." 

By way of contrast, let us watch the un- 
folding of another life: On a side street, 
in a tenement that is mean and poor and 
void of beauty, dwells another woman. She 
dwells in the same city as her fortunate sis- 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 17 

ter, but not in the same world. The gulf 
which separates the two is well-nigh as 
broad and impassable as that which sepa- 
rates mankind from the anthropoid apes. 
Wonderfully unlike in their lives, they are 
yet wonderfully alike in one respect. They 
are both mothers. 

The tenement mother has never known 
the bliss of freedom from poverty. The 
fear of Want has darkened every stage of 
her life. Its ugly shape brooded over her 
birth and perched upon her cradle. It 
spoiled her birthright of play and laughter 
and song. When she ought to have been 
playing in the enchanted gardens of child- 
hood, an Invisible Power made her captive 
and bound her to the remorseless wheels of 
industry. The same great Invisible Power 
took the light of hope from her eyes, the 
bloom of health from her cheeks, the song 
of the joy of life from her heart, and trans- 
muted them into gold. Overworked, un- 
derfed, and forever afraid of the morrow, 
she grew somehow into a pathetic sort of 



18 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

womanhood, weak and weary of body, un- 
trained, tragically ill-equipped for mother- 
hood. 

When first she feels the gentle stirrings 
of a new life the pride of motherhood's shy 
dawning is soon dispelled. The Great 
Fear which haunted her childhood rises to 
mock her pride and turn her cup of joy to 
bitterness. She lives her own childhood 
over again, and in her terror sees the Un- 
born hunger as she hungered, weep as she 
wept, toil as she toiled, faint and fall be- 
neath the heavy burden as she fainted and 
fell. She sees the Unborn despoiled by the 
Invisible Power as she has been despoiled. 

As the critical days draw near her terror 
increases with the pain caused by the rest- 
less life of the Unborn. The pains of the 
body are as nothing when compared with 
the anguish caused by the fearful thought 
that the Unborn must face a future like her 
own past — a tragic struggle with sordid 
poverty. She longs for rest for the sake of 
the Unborn, that it may rest, but in vain. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 19 

Daughter of toil and privation, she must toil 
on, despite her pain. The arts and re- 
sources of civilization are not available to 
shield such as she from danger, from weari- 
ness of body or distress of mind! 

At last there comes a day when she sinks 
by her unfinished task exhausted. She hears 
the low wail of her child. It falls upon her 
frightened ears like the reproach of an out- 
raged spirit. In the moment of her deliv- 
erance from the pain of the body, the an- 
guish of her soul increases. She sees, as 
only a mother can, the heritage of toil and 
privation to which her child is born. 

IV 

The contrast is not overdrawn. It is 
tragic and terrible, but we must face it and 
reckon with it if we would understand all 
that is implied in the demand that every 
woman who assumes the functions of moth- 
erhood shall have equal protection, equal ad- 
vantage, equal opportunity, so far as the 
gift of these lies within human power. 



20 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

It is no answer to our demand to urge 
that absolute equality of equipment for 
motherhood is a beautiful but unattainable 
ideal; that there are factors which are be- 
yond human control. Let so much be 
granted: there still remain the awful in- 
equalities which are of human causation and 
remediable by collective action. In the case 
of the two mothers of our illustration all the 
advantages of the mother of good fortune 
and all the disadvantages of the mother of 
ill fortune are of human origin. The 
beautiful home of the mother of good for- 
tune is an environmental condition of hu- 
man making. The skill and care which pro- 
tected her and equipped her for motherhood 
are human forces. Likewise the squalid 
tenement home of the less fortunate mother 
is an environmental condition of human 
origin. The poverty which blasted her life 
is a social condition of our human making. 
The labor in childhood which wrecked her 
body is a social condition, too, for which we 
are collectively responsible. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 21 

There is no reason other than our short- 
comings, our social ignorance, indifference or 
greed why any of these evils should continue 
to exist. It is well within our collective 
power to make the advantages enjoyed by the 
fortunate mother on the Avenue equally acces- 
sible to every mother in the civilized world. 
There is no good, sensible reason why a sin- 
gle ugly tenement should be built anywhere, 
or why those we have already suffered to be 
built should continue to exist and blight and 
dwarf the bodies and souls of the dwellers 
in them. It is well within our social power 
to make all human habitations conform to the 
splendid ideal of Ibsen's Master Builder 
Solness : 

". . . homes for human beings. Cozy, 
comfortable, bright homes, where father and 
mother and the whole troop of children can 
live in safety and gladness, feeling what a 
happy thing it is to be alive in the world — 
and most of all to belong to each other — in 
great things and in small." 

There is no good, sensible reason why any 



22 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

little child anywhere within the boundaries 
of civilization should be denied the precious 
birthright of joyful play and forced to per- 
form body and soul destroying tasks in fac- 
tory, workshop or mine, while strong men 
stand idle in the market place and complain, 
11 No man hath hired us." 

And surely there is no good reason why 
anywhere within the limits of civilized so- 
ciety a mother must imperil her own life and 
that of her offspring by working her body to 
weariness during the period of her preg- 
nancy; no reason why the health and happi- 
ness of mother and child should be menaced 
by the mother's fear of the hideous monster, 
poverty. It has been shown by Pinard and 
others that overwork during pregnancy seri- 
ously affects the offspring and is an impor- 
tant cause of premature birth and of still- 
birth. 1 If we take a hundred working 
women and enable them to rest during the 
last three months of pregnancy, we shall find 

1 In Boston more than five per cent, of the births are 
still-births. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 23 

that their offspring are larger and finer than 
those of a hundred similar working women 
who have pursued their regular employment 
until a short time before their confinement 
Moreover, there will be fewer premature 
births. It is not as generally known as it 
ought to be that prematurity of birth is one 
of the important causes of excessive infant 
mortality. Prematurity means immaturity. 
The prematurely born child comes into the 
world ill-equipped to withstand the perils 
of infancy and childhood. How important 
this is may be guessed from the fact that, ac- 
cording to Havelock Ellis, about one-third 
of the babies born in civilized countries to- 
day are prematurely born. 2 

If the right of the child to be well-born 
means anything at all, if it is more than a 
cant phrase, it means the right of every 
mother to be surrounded by all the care, all 
the skill, all the safeguards of the health and 
happiness of herself and her child, which 

2 Havelock Ellis, The Problem of Race-Regeneration, 
p, 18. 



24 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

human love and knowledge make possible. 
So much the intelligent and humane breeder 
of animals provides for the brood mare. 
Even the poor ignorant Kaffir aims to as- 
sure so much to the mother of his children. 
Elie Reclus tells us that savages almost uni- 
versally exempt their women from toil for 
long periods before and after childbirth. 3 
It is only among civilized human beings that 
this fundamental claim of motherhood re- 
ceives no recognition! 

Socialism, then, demands that every so- 
cial condition, every art and every power of 
science which now contribute to the health- 
fulness and happiness of motherhood for the 
privileged few shall be democratized and 
made common to all mothers. It would 
transform the privilege of a class into an 
inalienable right for all. Its cardinal prin- 
ciple, the communism of opportunity, 
touches the whole octave of life, but no- 
where is it of more vital significance to the 
life of the race than where it touches th§ 

5 Ewe Reclus, Primitive Folk, p. 35. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 25 

fundamental claims of motherhood in this 
far-reaching and revolutionary proposal. 



But it is not enough that the mother shall 
be given an opportunity to bring her baby 
into the world with all the advantages of 
healthful and beautiful preparation and of 
healthful and beautiful surroundings for the 
child. Motherhood needs a larger free- 
dom yet. Every mother needs and should 
have the perfect freedom of a full oppor- 
tunity to be a mother in the most complete 
sense of that much too narrowly interpreted 
word — freedom to remain with her child 
to nourish and guard its body and soul dur- 
ing all the dependent years. Nothing less 
than that will suffice. 

Motherhood is not for all women, per- 
haps, but it is surely woman's highest and 
holiest mission. A curse rests upon the so- 
cial system which tears millions of mothers 
away from the cradles of their babies, from 
their true vocation as builders of the bodies 



26 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

and souls of their sons and daughters, and 
forces them into factories, workshops, stores, 
counting-houses and other women's kitchens 
to labor while their children are neglected. 
A social system which finds larger profit in 
the making of paper bags and shoddy cloth- 
ing for the sake of dividends to an exploit- 
ing class than in the development of strong, 
well-nurtured children, is doomed. 

Yet this wrong is going on all the time, 
practically unchecked, all over the civilized 
world. The shockingly heavy mortality of 
our large factory towns, where many moth- 
ers are employed in factories, leaving their 
babies in the charge of old women, or of 
small girls, is very largely due to the em- 
ployment of the mothers away from the 
home. 4 There is no food for a baby which 

4 At the Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene 
and Demography, held at Washington, D. C, September, 
19 12, Dr. George Reid, public health officer of Stafford, 
England, gave an account of an inquiry which he had 
conducted, on behalf of the British government, to deter- 
mine, if possible, the effect of the labor of married 
women on infant mortality. According to The Survey, 
October 5, 19 12, the twelve months* life history of 5000 
infants in the families of Staffordshire artisans was 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 27 

can compare with its mother's milk. The 
mortality of hand-fed babies is generally 
three times that of breast-fed babies. Some- 
times the difference is even greater than that. 
There are many mothers who cannot nurse 
their offspring for physical reasons. They 
and their babies are to be pitied. There are 
women who can, but will not. They refuse 
to make the sacrifice of social enjoyment 
which nursing their babies would involve. 
Such women are to be condemned. Their 
sin comes perilously near to that form of 
selfishness which prompts infanticide. 

But there are other mothers whose 
breasts are full, and who would gladly nurse 
their babies, yet do not. They cannot. 
They are prevented from doing so by that 
great Invisible Power which drives them into 

studied. The employment of married women in the pot- 
tery towns of Staffordshire is common. Says The Sur- 
vey: "The infant mortality among the class of work- 
ing mothers was found to exceed that among the house- 
wives by 43 per cent. By a shift in the statistical clas- 
sifications it was found that the mortality among infants 
partly artificially fed exceeded that of the naturally fed 
class by 79 per cent., that those wholly artificially fed 
exceeded the breast-fed babies by 157 [per cent.]." 



28 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

the industrial world to become wage earners. 
Of all the wastes of which civilized society 
is guilty, the worst and most tragic is the 
waste of motherhood. The talents of un- 
counted thousands of mothers are wasted, 
perverted to base and unworthy ends. 
Sometimes members of the employing class 
experience some qualms of conscience as a 
result of the recognition of this waste, and, 
in a spirit of philanthropy, build nurseries in 
connection with their factories, so that the 
mothers may suckle their babies at stated 
intervals of their work. So keen is the de- 
sire to reduce the infant death rate, to stop 
some of the waste of baby lives, that many 
of our social reformers welcome this hideous 
compromise. They do not ask themselves 
why motherhood should thus be subordinated 
to profit-making; why in our social economy 
the maternal function of building up the 
body and soul of the child should be sub- 
ordinated to the production of commodities. 
In The Master Builder, one of the pro- 
foundest of his dramas, and the most beauti- 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 29 

■ ' ' ' -i n -. !■ ■ ■ H i ■ 11 r r 1 11 1 

ful, Ibsen describes with vivid power the 
true vocation of the mother, to be a builder 
of the bodies and souls of little children. 
Halvard Solness, the Master Builder, tells 
little Hilda Wangel, that elfin-like creature 
whose radicalism challenges him, the story 
of the great tragedy which wrecked his 
wife's life and made her the wraith-like 
creature that she is. He tells her that his 
wife's vocation has been crushed and stunted, 
in order that his own success might be 
achieved. He tells his bewildered com- 
panion that Aline, his wife, had a talent for 
building. 

" Not houses and towers, a.nd spires — 
not such things as I work away at," he ex- 
plains, and Hilda asks, " Well, but what 
then?" He replies with bitter agony: 

"For building up the souls of little chil- 
dren, Hilda. For building up children's 
souls in perfect balance, and in noble and 
beautiful forms. For enabling them to soar 
up into erect and full-grown human souls. 
That was Aline's talent. And there it all 



30 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

lies now — unused and unusable forever — 
of no earthly service to anyone — just like 
the ruins left by a fire" 

In all our industrial towns there are nu- 
merous women like Aline Solness. Their 
name is legion. Dowered by nature with 
the wonderful talent of motherhood, for 
" building up children's souls in perfect bal- 
ance, and in noble and beautiful forms," they 
are compelled to give their lives to other, 
less noble, work. Their talents lie " unused 
and unusable forever — of no earthly serv- 
ice to anyone — just like the ruins left by a 
fire." 

Nothing in the world can take the place 
of maternal affection and attention. From 
time to time amiable theorists — generally 
childless ! — have propounded plans for sup- 
planting the individual mother in the rearing 
of children. All sorts of communal nurs- 
eries with " scientific direction and manage- 
ment " have been advocated. If there is any 
one thing about which we may speak with 
assurance it is the folly of the basic idea of 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 31 

these schemes. All observed facts go to 
show that it is a calamity for a child to be 
deprived of the attention of its mother. The 
most elaborate communal or cooperative 
nursery ever devised, despite the most sci- 
entific direction and management, cannot 
equal in efficiency the care of a healthy 
mother of average intelligence. For or- 
phans and foundlings such institutions may, 
in some cases, be necessary, but they are nec- 
essary evils. Experience plainly teaches 
that it is far better to place the little ones in 
real homes, no matter how humble the homes 
may be. Every little human child needs and 
should have " a pair of mother's arms all its 
own." 

Even the practice, formerly much more 
common than now, of handing infants over 
to wet-nurses to be suckled, should never be 
resorted to if the mother can nurse the child 
herself. Such nursing is better than bottle 
feeding, but the mortality of infants suckled 
by others than their own mothers is double 
that of babies nursed, as nature intended 



33 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

them to be, by their own mothers. Plato, 
in his immortal Utopia, provided that no 
mother should be able to nurse, or to iden- 
tify, her own child. We know now that 
Plato, profound thinker though he was, 
made the fundamental error of regarding 
maternity as a purely animal function, and of 
disregarding the subtle psychic factors which 
enter into it. 

The whole authority of modern science 
supports the demand of the Socialist for such 
a change in our industrial system as will free 
motherhood and make it possible for every 
mother to devote herself to the care of her 
children. The world does not need — it 
will be infinitely better without — the great 
universal waste of the talents of mother- 
hood. 

VI 

It is just a hundred years ago since Rob- 
ert Owen, in the first of his Essays on the 
Formation of Human Character, wrote: 
" Any general character, from the best to 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 33 

1 z 

the worst, from the most ignorant to the 
most enlightened, may be given to any com- 
munity, even to the world at large, by the 
application of proper means; which means 
are to a great extent at the command and 
under the control of those who have influ- 
ence in the affairs of men." Owen's experi- 
ence at New Lanark had convinced him that 
human character depended upon heredity to 
a very much smaller degree, and upon en- 
vironment to a very much larger degree, 
than was generally believed. He was not 
slow to perceive that here was a fact of tre- 
mendous significance to the worker for so- 
cial reformation. So long as men believed 
that the physical and moral decay by which 
they were confronted had its roots in the 
past, that children were literally " damned 
before they were born," they could not un- 
dertake the task of social redemption with 
the faith and confidence essential to success. 
Owen's success was due to his profound be- 
lief that environment was far more im- 



34 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

portant than heredity, and he bravely did 
his part to dispel the fear of heredity which 
paralyzed the hearts and hopes of men. 

We know to-day that Owen was right. 
The overwhelming bulk of scientific evidence 
supports his conclusion. It was the belief 
of the late Dr. Barnardo, the famous Eng- 
lish philanthropist, that heredity is a practi- 
cally negligible factor in the general problem 
of poverty, vice, crime and racial degen- 
eration. He gathered the human drift- 
wood of the great English metropolis, the 
foundlings picked up in the gutters and ash- 
cans, the orphans of the criminal and vicious 
and shiftless denizens of the slums, the waifs 
and strays who found their way into the 
clutches of the police. From such unprom- 
ising material, he reared men of good health 
and character, from whose ranks Canada, 
South Africa and Australia have recruited 
thousands of their finest citizens. 

At the First International Congress on 
Eugenics, held in London in the summer of 
19 1 2, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, the former 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 35 

Prime Minister of England, pointed out that 
there is far less dogmatism, and far more 
divergence of opinion, upon the subject of 
heredity to-day than in the seventies and 
eighties of the last century. That is true, 
at least to the extent that it is now generally 
admitted that environment is the more im- 
portant factor. Sir John MacDonald, per- 
haps the leading English authority on the 
subject, stoutly maintained that, in the ma- 
jority of cases, the habitual criminal is made 
so by his environment and training, that 
heredity is a far less important factor. 
Morals depend upon physical health and 
good environment far more than upon her- 
itage. Professor S. G. Smith, of the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, epigrammatically 
summed up the case in his declaration that 
he would " rather be the son of a healthy 
burglar than of a consumptive bishop." He 
took the view of Dr. Eichholz, expressed in 
his testimony before the famous British In- 
terdepartmental Committee on Physical De- 
terioration, that there " is a lack of any real 



36 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

evidence of any hereditary taint or strain of 
deterioration even among the poor popula- 
tions of our cities . . . our physical degen- 
eracy is produced afresh by each generation 
. . • there is every chance under reasonable 
measures of amelioration of restoring our 
poorest population to a condition of normal 
physique. . . . The interpretation would 
seem to be that Nature gives every genera- 
tion a fresh start." 

From the point of view of the Socialist 
seeking to remove poverty, vice and crime, 
and from the point of view of the mothers 
of the race, this is the most inspiring and 
encouraging message science has ever given 
to the world. It means that the wrongs of 
our ancestors affect us much less than an 
older generation of scientists taught us to be- 
lieve. It means that if we can surround the 
children from the moment of birth with de- 
cent conditions, maintain them in a proper 
environment, solve the problem of the distri- 
bution of wealth and do away with poverty, 
we can move upward, and onward practically 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 37 

unhampered by the sins of past generations, 
unaffrighted by the terrible specter of physi- 
cal heredity damning our babies while yet 
they lie in the wombs of their mothers. 

We Socialists do not deny an important 
influence to heredity. Still less do we deny 
the importance of many of the things our 
friends, the Eugenists, are so vigorously con- 
tending for. That certain hereditarily 
transmissible diseases and weaknesses ought 
to bar marriage and procreation is in nowise 
incompatible with our faith. As Dr. Sa- 
leeby reminds us, recent study has clearly 
shown the importance of heredity in the 
realm of idiocy and insanity, but it has 
shown also, with equal clearness, that even 
in cretinic idiocy, the addition of " one single 
ingredient to the diet may convert the poor 
idiot into a person of fair and normal 
mind" 5 It is only when eugenics is offered 
as an all-sufficient solution of the social prob- 
lem that we Socialists need have any conflict 
with the Eugenists. 

5 C. W. Saleeby, Methods of Race-Regeneration, p. 12. 



38 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

So long as it was believed that tuberculosis 
was perpetuated mainly, if not wholly, 
through the channels of heredity, that " it 
ran in families," and was " born in the 
blood " of its victims, so long we were help- 
less to effectually combat it. We only be- 
gan to effectually fight the disease when we 
set ourselves free from the fear of heredity. 6 
And so it is with the great problem of race 
degeneration, including in that term poverty, 
vice and crime. We can only address our- 
selves hopefully and confidently to the task 
of regenerating the race when, no longer op- 
pressed and dominated by the fear of hered- 
ity, which is beyond human control, so far 
as all the countless generations of the past 
are concerned, we turn our attention to the 
living present, to the great facts of environ- 
ment, which are within our control. 

6 In a paper read at the Academy of Medicine, New 
York City, on January 19th, 1914, it was declared by the 
eminent medical authority, Lieut.-Colonel Woodruff, late 
of the U. S. A. medical corps, that it is the consensus of ex- 
pert opinion that no child is ever born with tuberculosis. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 39 

VII 

The hope of the race, then, lies in the 
equalization of opportunity which is the 
Alpha and Omega of Socialism. And 
to the mothers of the race that ideal must 
make its strongest appeal. Socialism is 
a living protest against the waste of human 
life represented by the appalling volume of 
needless infant mortality. Our gravest 
peril is not " race suicide," but race homi- 
cide. The heart of our problem is not a 
low birthrate, but a needlessly high death- 
rate. More than thirty per cent, of our 
babies die without reaching the age of two 
years. One-fourth of all the babies born 
to the mothers of America die without reach- 
ing the age of one year. Each year, in the 
United States, we needlessly sacrifice fully 
150,000 baby lives. These are victims of 
poverty, of neglect, of ignorance — in a 
word, of the frightful inequality of oppor- 
tunity which characterizes our social order. 

Socialists are often accused of hugging to 



4 o SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

themselves the delusion of a world in which 
all men and women will be equal. Their 
enemies taunt them with aiming to bring 
about " the dull level of equality." In point 
of fact, only through the equalization of op- 
portunity can we ever realize anything ap- 
proaching true individualism. The Social- 
ist ideal is not at all incompatible with the 
development of individual genius and char- 
acter. On the contrary, until we socialize 
all the opportunities for healthful living, so 
that they are the common heritage of all, we 
shall waste an incalculable amount of poten- 
tial individual genius. 

There must be inequality of capacity, of 
character, of achievement. That is Na- 
ture's universal and immutable law. But if 
we are to obtain the best results from that 
inequality of capacity, character and achieve- 
ment, we must give to every child born full 
and free access to every social gift, so that 
he may develop all his gifts. The inevitable 
result of this communism of opportunity 
must be a glorious individualism of achieve- 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 4I 

ment. Socialism, then, is not aiming at 
equality and a level plain of mediocrity, but 
rather at a glorious inequality through the 
equality of advantage which it seeks to es- 
tablish. 

That there is a much greater degree of 
equality in human capacity and talent than 
we have heretofore recognized is certain. 
As we have seen, within the species, environ- 
ment counts for more than heredity. A 
great deal of the moral and intellectual su- 
periority which exists among men is due to 
exceptional advantages, rather than to an 
inherited superiority. To admit so much is 
not to claim that with the destruction of the 
barriers which now deny to the many the 
advantages enjoyed by the few there would 
no longer be differences among men. Equal- 
ity could only be attained by holding down 
the stronger to the level of the weaker. 
Equality of opportunity, on the other hand, 
would simply unbind those who are now 
bound down by lack of opportunity and set 
them free. 



42 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

Poverty must be abolished, because it is 
anti-social, and denies millions of souls an 
adequate opportunity to develop their in- 
born powers. The disease-breeding tene- 
ment and the slum must go for the same rea- 
son. Child labor must go, because it stunts 
the body and the mind, destroying the physi- 
cal, intellectual and spiritual forces which 
are essential to the highest and noblest de- 
velopment of a human being. When we 
turn back to the Athens of Pericles, where 
individualism flourished and produced the 
noblest art the world has ever known, we are 
struck at once by the fact that there was in 
Athens then, for the free citizens, a splendid 
communism of opportunity. Athens found 
that the highest individualism was the nat- 
ural fruitage of her fundamental communism 
which placed the means of the common life 
under the control of the whole body politic. 
In like manner, we Socialists believe, the 
most generous individualism of intellectual 
and spiritual culture will result from the so- 
cialization of production and exchange and 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 43 

the social advantages based upon production 
and exchange. 

VIII 

To-day the production and the exchange 
of wealth are functions carried on with 
an anti-social object, namely, the profit of a 
class of non-producers. That is the funda- 
mental wrong of capitalism. That is the 
source of its poverty, its vice, its crime, its 
inefficient lives, its inequality of opportunity. 
Those who make the bread of the world 
cannot eat the bread their hands have made. 
No one is poor because there is not enough 
for all. No child in America suffers hunger 
because there is a dearth of food in America. 
No child wears rags or goes without shoes 
because good clothes and shoes cannot be 
made in sufficient quantity to supply all. 

No! When the hunger-cry is loudest the 
storehouses groan with their burden of food. 
When there is the greatest lack of clothing 
and shoes, warehouses are filled to overflow- 
ing with them. And even if it were other- 
wise, there is always a well-nigh inexhaustible 



44 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

■ —————— — — — — if 

reserve of productive capacity available to 
supply every human need. Machinery and 
labor and raw materials are plentiful. On 
the one side we have abundant natural re- 
sources and wonderful powers of production; 
on the other side we have a great unsatisfied 
need which could be easily satisfied by the ap- 
plication of a moiety of our powers to an 
infinitesimal portion of our resources. But 
we have not as yet learned to direct our pro- 
ductive capacity to the social good. 

If our economic activities were inspired 
and controlled by a social purpose and vision, 
no human want would remain unsatisfied so 
long as there were unexhausted productive 
powers and opportunities. All our re- 
sources and our skill and might would be 
combined to meet the needs of every human 
being. If we found ourselves incapable of 
producing plenty for all, we should, if we 
were truly social, see to it that all shared in 
the dearth due to the lack of productive 
capacity. On the other hand, finding our- 
selves capable of producing infinitely more 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 45 

than we need, we should, if we were truly 
social, see to it that all shared the advantages 
of our triumph as producers. We should 
aim to make life better, richer, happier and 
more beautiful for all. We should see that 
the result of our triumph was more beauty 
in the homes of all and larger leisure for all 
to enjoy the beauty. Inspired and controlled 
by the ideal of social well-being, we should 
see that no human being performed in pain a 
task which might have been performed in 
joy; that nothing ugly was produced which 
might have been made beautiful; that noth- 
ing was made which was unworthy of our 
best power; that our work was the worthiest, 
and performed under the worthiest condi- 
tions, of which we were capable. 

So long as the prevailing capitalist system 
lasts this social ideal will remain unattaina- 
ble. For capitalism is essentially anti- 
social. Its entire structure rests upon the 
production of things primarily for sale to the 
end that a ruling class may profit, instead of 
upon the social principle of production for 



46 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

■ i — ————— i i t 

use, for social gain, for the common good 
and joy of all. 

There is no other adequate explanation of 
our social shortcomings. The only reason 
why men who are capable of building beauti- 
ful homes — as is shown by the palaces they 
build for the rich — build ugly, prison-like, 
gloomy tenements for themselves and their 
wives and children to dwell in is the fact that 
their labor is governed, not by the desire to 
attain supreme usefulness, but by the desire 
for profit. The only reason that a man's 
burdens are fastened upon a child's frail back 
is profit. The only reason for the adultera- 
tion of the milk of the helpless child and 
the bread of the father is profit. And it is 
that same anti-social thing, profit, which ex- 
plains the wanton destruction of the food for 
which men, women and children pine, and 
for lack of which they starve and die. In 
191 1, amid a nation-wide outcry against the 
prevailing famine prices and the increasing 
difficulty of making ends meet experienced 
by millions of people, the newspapers told 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 47 

the story of cold storage warehouses being 
opened up and food wantonly destroyed, of 
a million dozen eggs destroyed in New York 
alone, in order that the supply might be les- 
sened and the high price of eggs arbitrarily 
maintained. 7 Only in a society which pro- 
duces primarily for profit and class advantage 
could such a condition ever exist. 

To whom can the abolition of these and 
the manifold other evils of capitalism be of 
greater interest than to the mothers? Who 
better than they can know the bitter cost of 
production for profit? Who is better able 
than the mother to translate the tale of capi- 
talist profit into the terms of social loss — 
of poverty, of suffering, of dwarfed bodies 
and souls, of wrecked hopes and lives? 
Who can have a greater interest than the 
mother in the promise which Socialism brings 
of a world redeemed from the curse which 
production for profit has laid upon our civ- 
ilization? 

7 Vide daily newspapers, October 28, 1912. 



48 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

IX 

Production for use instead of profit, 
for the common good instead of for the 
gain of a few at the cost of the many, can 
only be made possible through the col- 
lective ownership of the resources of na- 
ture and the principal means of production. 
And so everywhere the Socialist movement 
is striving to bring about the collective own- 
ership and democratic control and manage- 
ment of all those means of production which 
so long as they are owned and controlled by 
individuals, or by groups of individuals, en- 
able their owners to build thrones of pride 
and power upon the degradation of the many, 
the users of the tools, the actual producers. 
Collective ownership of the means of pro- 
duction, with democratic management, is the 
central demand in the Socialist programme 
everywhere. 

This programme does not contemplate the 
destruction of all forms of private property, 
and the making of all things common to all. 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 49 

On the contrary, it is quite certain that col- 
lective ownership of the great social 
agencies of production and exchange would 
result in making private property far more 
general than it is now. Millions of people 
have practically no private property at all 
to-day. They do not own the homes in 
which they live. They do not own the things 
they produce. They do not own enough to 
provide the necessities of a decent existence 
during a month of enforced abstention from 
labor. When sickness, accident, or other 
misfortune, compels them to be idle for a 
few weeks they are reduced to dependence 
upon charity as the only alternative to starva- 
tion. Even in the most prosperous times 
millions of people are so divorced from prop- 
erty of all kinds that they never have enough 
good food to eat, enough good clothes to 
wear, or decent homes in which to live. 
How idle, therefore, it is to urge as a rea- 
son for opposing Socialism and remaining 
content with the existing order the fear that 
Socialism would do away with private prop- 



SO SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

erty! Capitalism has never provided all 
people with private property. Socialism on 
the other hand, would make it possible for 
every human being to have and own all the 
private property which that human being 
could use to advantage and without imposing 
any disadvantage upon another human 
being. 

The collective ownership of the principal 
means of social production — that is, the 
natural resources, the mines, factories, rail- 
ways, machinery, and so on — would not 
take away anything from the great majority 
of people. True, the worker would not 
himself own the machine used by him, but 
that is his condition to-day. The workers 
in our great factories and workshops do not 
own the tools with which they labor. They 
do not own the raw materials upon which 
they labor. They do not own the places in 
which they labor. They do not own the 
things which they produce by their labor. 
All these are owned by an exploiting class of 
non-producers, whose interest it is to see that 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 51 

the producers get in the form of wages as 
little as they can manage to live upon, and 
produce as much more than they receive as 
possible. This is the inevitable interest of 
the owning class, because its own income is 
derived from that which the workers pro- 
duce over and above what they receive in the 
form of wages. 

Collective ownership and democratic con- 
trol of the means of production would not 
give the ownership of the tools of labor to 
the individual worker. That was once pos- 
sible, in the days when production was of 
necessity carried on by hand labor. It is 
not possible with machine production, which 
is only carried on by the organized labor 
of masses of workers. But collective owner- 
ship would make it impossible for the idle few 
to exploit the industrious many. It would 
make it possible for the workers themselves 
to exercise an effective control over the prod- 
ucts of their labor and their distribution. 
It would make certain a fuller enjoyment by 
the producers of the wealth they produce. 



52 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

This is what we mean when we say that col- 
lective ownership of the forces of social 
production would result in a greater dif- 
fusion of real private property. 

It is not difficult for the mother to under- 
stand how common ownership of the means 
of production can be combined with private 
ownership in consumption goods in social 
economy. Every mother can see that the 
principle is the same as that which governs 
the home. The ideal home is, indeed, only 
a microcosm of the ideal state. In the well- 
regulated home there is equal care for the 
collective interest of the family as a whole 
and for the individual interest of each mem- 
ber. The comfort and advantage of each 
individual member of the family depends 
upon the denial of the power to monopolize 
many things in the home, and maintaining 
them as the common property of all the 
members. No one member could assert and 
exercise a right to the sole ownership and 
control of these things without injuring every 
other member of the family. On the other 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 53 

hand, there are many things which must be re- 
garded as belonging to individual members, 
if harmony is to prevail. 

Every mother sees this and comprehends 
the philosophy of distribution upon which 
it is based. If there are things essential to 
the welfare and happiness of all the members 
of the family, the control of which by a 
single member would give that member a 
power to rule all the rest, and to deny them 
comfort and happiness except upon irksome 
and humiliating conditions, the safety of the 
family is only assured by making those things 
common to all. But things which the indi- 
vidual needs to own and control for the at- 
tainment of personal happiness and well-be- 
ing, the ownership and exclusive use of which 
does not subject other members of the family 
to discomfort, properly belong to the indi- 
vidual, and the happiness of the family de- 
pends upon the ability of each individual in 
it to secure all such things necessary to the 
satisfaction of his or her wants. 

Socialism, then, is an attempt to realize 



54 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

l 

in the larger life of the community that ra- 
tional and fair adjustment of collective and 
individual power and responsibility which is 
exemplified by the family at its best. And 
to the mother-genius with its full understand- 
ing of family life Socialism may well bear 
its programme, confident of a sympathetic 
understanding. 

x 
Many a thoughtful mother sees in 
the Socialist ideal a beautiful inspira- 
tion and yet remains aloof from the Social- 
ist movement because the goal seems so far 
off and unattainable. She measures the task 
by the narrow span of her own lifetime and 
is overwhelmed. On every hand she sees 
poverty and suffering. The need is im- 
mediate, and Socialism seems so far remote. 
She wants to feel that her life and her work 
benefit those who are suffering now, not the 
unborn generations alone. The social re- 
form which promises immediate improve- 
ment, however small, makes a strong claim 
for her support, weaning her from service in 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 55 

the struggle to bring about the great com- 
prehensive change which must take such a 
long time for its consummation. She wants 
to feel here and now that by her labors life 
is made happier for the children of mis- 
fortune. 

Such a mother needs the assurance which 
comes from a full knowledge of the Social- 
ist movement, and the important work it has 
accomplished in the sphere of practical social 
reform. No greater mistake could possibly 
be made than to regard the Socialist as one 
whose passionate yearning for the millennium 
of his dreams causes him to refuse to deal 
with present problems and to disdain such 
measures of relief as lie close at hand. Yet 
that is a widely prevailing conception. 

It is not the least of the glories of the 
Socialist movement, and certainly not the 
least of its claims upon the thoughtful 
mother, that it is the most powerful force 
at work in the world for the amelioration 
of present evils and for present social bet- 
terment. This is the natural result of its 



56 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

I I II — — «— . II I IIIIWHJ.- HI - II.1 I n .■« i . < CT r » i n.i» n — I 

class character and origin: born of the suf- 
fering and striving of the disinherited and 
downtrodden, voicing their sorrows and their 
visions, it could not remain indifferent to the 
possibilities of relief and betterment during 
the long struggle toward its goal. Socialism 
has caused those who most feared it to work 
for social reforms in the vain hope that these 
might appease the people and wean them 
from Socialism. " Social revolutions are 
averted by judicious social reforms," said 
Turgot. It was in that spirit that Bismarck 
inaugurated the social reform policies of 
Germany. They have signally failed to ac- 
complish Bismarck's subtle purpose, but have 
had the opposite effect of helping Socialism 
by improving the equipment of the people 
for the great struggle. Similar results have 
attended the efforts of all those who, in 
various countries, have followed Bismarck's 
example. Politicians may attempt to lessen 
the number of Socialist ballots by granting 
social reforms, but as surely as these reforms 
increase the physical, mental and moral 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 57 

stamina of the workers, making them 
stronger and wiser, they will devote their 
newly acquired powers to the struggle against 
capitalism. 

But it is not alone by frightening conces- 
sions from the master class that the Socialist 
movement promotes social reform. In every 
country in which the Socialist movement has 
taken root it has been the pioneer of all ef- 
fective social reform. Even if we go back 
to the famous Communist Manifesto of 
Marx and Engels, we shall find the need 
and value of social reform recognized. In- 
deed, many a present day reform programme 
reads almost as if it were taken from the 
second section of that Socialist classic. 

No mother can be indifferent to the splen- 
did record of the Socialists as fighters for re- 
forms dealing with the welfare of children. 
There is hardly a single measure in the 
programme which the most thoughtful and 
progressive social reformers of today are 
advocating which has not long been zeal- 
ously advocated by Socialists. In most 



58 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

I 

cases, the Socialists were the first to see the 
necessity of the reforms and to advocate 
them. 

Wherever Socialists have been elected to 
parliamentary bodies, or to administrative of- 
fices, they have fought for the protection of 
motherhood. Many years before the Inter- 
national Congress of Hygiene, in 1900, 
passed a resolution declaring that " every 
working woman is entitled to rest during the 
last three months of her pregnancy," and 
urging that legislation be enacted to that ef- 
fect, the Socialists in many countries had 
vigorously urged that reform. Moreover, 
they had faced the need of providing for the 
mother during her enforced idleness and ad- 
vocated the payment of " maternity sub- 
sidies " by the state or the municipality to 
atone for the loss of wages. It is now very 
generally admitted that some such provision 
must be made before the demand of the 
International Congress of Hygiene can be 
effectively met. The Socialists have gone 
even further and urged that society must, in 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 59 

* 

its own interest, put an end to the employ- 
ment of mothers during the infancy of their 
children. They have pointed to the fright- 
ful mortality of infants whose mothers are 
compelled to work away from their homes, 
and to the ill effects of inadequate and im- 
proper care among the children who survive. 
They have urged that society ought to make 
it possible for the mother to be a mother in 
the full sense of the word, to care for her 
baby during the first years of its life. In 
many European cities where the Socialists 
have secured the necessary power they have 
actually made this possible. To the mother, 
soon after the birth of her baby, goes a rep- 
resentative of the city, bearing this message: 
" Mother, our city cannot afford to have you 
neglect your baby for the sake of going to 
work in factory, workshop or store. That 
would be an ill exchange for the city and for 
the nation. The highest service you can 
render society, the most valuable labor you 
can perform, is to bring up your baby in 
strength of body and character. For that 



6o SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

service the city feels that it can well afford 
to pay you as much as any manufacturer can 
afford to pay you for tending a soulless 
machine. Not as a dependent upon charity, 
but as a valuable servant of the city, you are 
to be paid for the best work of which you are 
capable — building up the soul of your child 
in a healthy and noble body." 

There is not a single measure for the 
physical welfare of children upon which ex- 
perts are now agreed which the Socialists of 
the world have not long advocated. They 
were the first to see the close relation be- 
tween high infantile mortality and a milk 
supply conducted for profit. They were 
pioneers in demanding the establishment of 
municipal depots for the supply of whole- 
some milk for infant feeding. They were 
the first, also, to recognize the plight of the 
under-nourished school child and the need 
of providing school lunches for tens of thou- 
sands of children, either free of charge or 
at a small cost. Finally, the Socialists are 
justly entitled to most of the credit for the 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 61 

splendid development of the system of 
medical inspection and attention in our pub- 
lic schools. They were among the first in 
modern times to rediscover the close relation 
of educability to physical health. They 
were among the first to see the utter futility 
of the old methods of medical inspection, 
which simply sought for cases of contagious 
disease and excluded the children from the 
schools, heedless of the fact that they were 
often uncared for and, through playing with 
other children in their homes and upon the 
streets, were as dangerous as though they 
had remained in school. 

Nowadays, in our most enlightened and 
progressive cities, medical inspection aims 
not at the detection of contagious diseases 
alone, but at the detection of every physical 
weakness or defect which may be a hindrance 
to the soundest development of the child, 
physically, mentally and morally. Defects 
of vision, of hearing and of breathing are 
sought out and, in many cases, properly 
treated, so that the child is given a chance 



62 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

I I II W , I I I I II I 

to attain the mens sana in corpore sano, 
which is the ideal of the wise teacher and the 
wise parent. Dental clinics in connection 
with the schools, outdoor schools for weak 
and convalescent children and school sani- 
toria have been advocated at first almost 
exclusively by Socialists, and have been es- 
tablished as a result of the growing accept- 
ance of the Socialist ideal of social respon- 
sibility for the welfare of the children. 

The true Socialist conceives of society as 
a great Over-Parent, not supplanting the 
protection and responsibility of the natural 
parents, but supplementing them by other 
and more far-reaching protection and respon- 
sibility. He would have society, like a great, 
universal mother, with all the wisdom and 
power of all the ages, protect all children 
from harm and tenderly lead them in the 
ways of Righteousness and Fellowship and 
Peace. 

XI 

Socialism and motherhood are one in their 
hatred of war and militarism and one in 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 63 

their love of peace. Every mother's heart 
holds dear the great vision of world-peace, 
of a time coming when the red ruin of Mars 
shall no longer ravage the earth. And in 
the heart of every Socialist the same precious 
vision is held equally dear. As the greatest 
single force in the world aiming to destroy 
militarism and bring about peace, the Social- 
ist movement must appeal to mothers. 

Ask the thoughtful mother why she hates 
war and militarism, and she will answer: 
" I am a woman — a mother. All the 
strength and pride of men which war has 
disfigured, maimed and slaughtered upon all 
the battlefields of history have been carried 
beneath the hearts of mothers like myself, 
mothers who dreamed of joyous and beauti- 
ful lives for their sons. We, the mothers 
of the race, have been most despoiled by 
war: we have paid the supreme forfeit. 
The lives blotted out in the bloody mists of 
war have all been conceived in our wombs and 
nursed at our breasts. The lives broken 
and marred by war have all been blood of 



64 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

our blood, bone of our bone, flesh of our 
flesh. Why, then, should we mothers do 
aught but hate war and love peace? " 

Ask the thoughtful Socialist why he hates 
war and militarism, and he will answer: 
" I am a Socialist. All my hope and faith 
I repose in the working class, the makers of 
bread. To it I belong. Its woes are my 
woes, its foes are my foes. In every war 
the burdens fall most heavily upon my class. 
It is from my class that most of the victims 
of war are drawn. It is upon my class that 
the heavy task of paying for war's wicked 
waste inevitably falls. The labor spent in 
making the implements of war, even during 
the years of so-called peace, would feed all 
the children of my class who now perish 
from hunger. Why, then, should we of the 
working class do aught but hate war and love 
peace? " 

It is not strange, therefore, that the Social- 
ist movement is universally recognized as a 
mighty force making for universal peace, 
and that every political victory of the Social- 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 65 

ists is interpreted as a fresh blow at mili- 
tarism. " The Social Democracy is Ger- 
many's greatest peace organization," 
declared Professor Mommsen, the famous 
German historian, and that is becoming so 
well understood that the Socialists are ad- 
mitted to be the most powerful preservers 
of peace in Europe, even by those who are 
most opposed to them. When the first news 
of the sweeping Socialist victories in the 
Reichstag elections of 19 12 was conveyed to 
August Bebel, the veteran Socialist leader, 
he is reported to have exclaimed with deep 
emotion, "Good! The peace of Europe is 
now assured! " That was no idle boast. It 
is safe to say that in England, where fear of 
a war with Germany rested like a menacing 
cloud, the Socialist victory was hailed with 
as much joy as in Germany itself. When, 
soon after the Reichstag elections, one of 
the parliamentary representatives of the 
Social Democratic Party of Germany visited 
Great Britain, he was astonished to find that 
wherever he went, even in the remotest ham- 



66 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

lets, he was hailed by the people with the 
greatest enthusiasm. No great warrior and 
conqueror of peoples ever made such a 
triumphal tour in modern times as did that 
simple representative of German Socialism. 
And the secret of it was simply that the peo- 
ple of Great Britain, without regard to party, 
saw in the Socialist Victory a splendid pledge 
that peace between Germany and England 
would be maintained. 

With very rare exceptions, wars have al- 
ways been carried on in the interests of rul- 
ing and exploiting classes. Modern wars 
are almost invariably wars for markets, that 
is to say, they are waged for the purpose 
of enabling the master class in one country 
to force its surplus commodities upon the 
people of some other country. The hope 
for world peace is inseparable from the hope 
of the proletariat. It is the interest of the 
working class to wage war against war. 
Marx understood that, and in an address 
written for the International Workingmen's 
Association declared, " The alliance of the 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 67 

working classes of all countries will ulti- 
mately kill war." 

The abolition of war! What an inspira- 
tion to believe that this great international 
movement will make real the sublime vision 
of universal peace! That the genius of 
mankind, inspired by the Socialist ideal, will 
forge into tools of peaceful industry the cruel 
weapons of destruction! That never again 
shall vultures prey upon bloody and corpse- 
strewn battlefields ! That instead of spend- 
ing more than seventy per cent, of our na- 
tional income 8 upon wars past and present 
and to prepare for future wars, we shall de- 
vote all our resources to the great work of 
making it easier for men and women to live 
healthy, happy and beautiful lives ! 

XII 

This, then, is the programme of 
Socialism. That it makes a powerful 
appeal to the mother-instinct cannot be 

8 In the United States, during the thirty years, 1879- 
1909, 71.6 per cent of our total national income wa9 so 
spent ! 



68 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

denied. It is vibrant with the love and 
tenderness of motherhood. None need fear 
this programme save the powers that lay 
chains upon the bodies and souls of the 
children of men and bind them down when 
they would climb to the heights in answer to 
the Challenge of the Spirit. 

The message of Socialism is a message 
of Life and Liberty and Love. It promises 
to destroy the political, social and economic 
disabilities imposed upon womanhood: to 
give the mothers of the race equal freedom 
with the fathers of the race. It pledges it- 
self to destroy those conditions of life and 
labor which weaken the mothers and deny 
to their babies the right to be well born. It 
claims for every child all the advantages of 
healthful and beautiful environment. It 
would destroy the dread fear of want which 
drives the mother from the service of her 
child into the service of a great factory. It 
would bestow upon every child, as its right- 
ful heritage, opportunity to develop all its 
powers. It would apply the principles of 



THE ANGEL'S GIFTS 69 

the family to the state. It would abolish 
the body and soul debasing labor of children 
and give to the little ones their Kingdom 
of Laughter and Dreams. It would end the 
waste of human lives by poverty, and make 
true wealth possible for all and illth for none. 
It would put an end to war — the war of 
classes as well as the war of nations — and 
organize and direct the genius and power of 
the race, now so largely given to destruction, 
to the enrichment of life for all and the real- 
ization of Human Brotherhood. 

Socialism comes to the mother as an Angel 
of Light and Life, bearing the torch of a 
great hope. " I am Life Abundant," cries 
the Angel, " and I bring you as gifts the 
Freedom and Opportunity and Joy and Peace 
for which you have prayed. See, my Sister, 
Mother of Men, all these are yours if you 
will put forth your hand and receive them." 

And the mother yearns to take the Angel' } s 
gifts, but does not. Fear holds her back. 
She is the Slave of the Fear. 



II 

THE MOTHER'S FEAR 



IT is not difficult to understand why so 
many thoughtful mothers oppose Social- 
ism and remain aloof from the Socialist 
movement, despite the powerful appeal to 
their hearts of its promise of political, social 
and economic equality for men and women 
and equality of opportunity for all children. 
To the attainment of these ideal conditions 
they would gladly devote their lives could 
they but feel certain that, in the effort to at- 
tain them, Socialism would not create new 
evils or destroy some good of priceless value 
already attained. 

Probably the vast majority of those 
women who oppose Socialism do so because 
they have been taught to believe that it would 
abolish monogamic marriage and utterly de- 
stroy the institution of private family life 
which rests upon that form of marriage. 
The defenders of the existing social order 

70 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 71 

have charged the Socialist movement with 
the advocacy of u Free Love " with so much 
persistency that we cannot wonder that so 
many women dread it as an unspeakably evil 
thing. They believe, with ample warrant, 
that the private family based upon the per- 
manent and voluntary union of one man to 
one woman is an essential condition of true 
civilization. They believe, with ample war- 
rant, that whatever menaces such family life, 
menaces all civilization and progress. Not 
until their fears are dispelled will they em- 
brace the Angel of Socialism and accept the 
gifts she proffers. 

Women are not opposed to anything 
which can rightly be called " Free Love." 
They are not afraid of the freedom of love. 
They know that perfect love can only exist 
where there is perfect freedom. Every nor- 
mal woman believes that unfettered love is 
the noblest sanction of human marriage and 
parenthood; that the baser considerations of 
wealth, title, social position, and the like, 
ought not to enter into the sacred relations 



72 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

of marriage and motherhood and father- 
hood. Every woman of normal mind and 
heart believes that a woman should no more 
be driven into marriage and motherhood for 
the sake of securing the assurance of food, 
clothing and shelter than she should be 
ravished by bestial brutes. And every 
woman of normal mind and heart believes 
that loveless marriage, whether for the ad- 
vantages of social position, or for mere main- 
tenance, is a degradation of womanhood, 
a form of prostitution in reality. No church 
ceremonial and no altar can sanctify such 
marriages. That men and women should be 
free from economic bondage — free to 
marry only in response to the promptings of 
pure affection, no woman will question. But 
that is not the freedom that is referred to 
when Socialists are charged with being Free 
Lovers. 

What is meant by the charge is that Social- 
ism seeks to destroy monogamic marriage, 
and to substitute for it some other form of 
sex relationship. No matter how these sub- 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 73 

stitutes for the present marriage system differ 
in character from one another, they are all 
grouped together by the enemies of Social- 
ism under the misleading generic title of 
" Free Love." The fact that some of the 
substitutes would greatly lessen social author- 
ity and responsibility, and to a corresponding 
degree free the individual from existing re- 
straints of law or custom, while others would 
greatly increase social responsibility and 
authority, and lessen personal choice, is 
ignored: they are all covered by the single 
term of popular opprobrium, " Free Love." 

II 

It will help us greatly in our consideration 
of this subject to get this fact very clearly 
fixed in our minds. Plato, the great Greek 
philosopher, wrote a book describing the 
ideal social state as he conceived it. He 
first of all considered all the problems arising 
in the relations of imperfect humanity, and 
then, just as an inventor tries to invent a 
better mechanism than one which has been 



74 SOCIALISiM AND MOTHERHOOD 

found to be unsuitable, he tried to invent 
better-working social relations. These he 
described in his Utopia, The Republic. 
This is now universally regarded as one of 
the great masterpieces of the world's litera- 
ture. As such, we enjoy it, while rejecting 
much of its philosophy and most of its de- 
vices. Its philosophy and its devices reflect 
the limitations of the age in which Plato 
lived. 

Among the problems which Plato sought 
to solve were the problems of marriage and 
parenthood. He saw that the most funda- 
mental of social relations were far from 
uniformly successful. There were many un- 
happy and unfortunate marriages then as 
now. Because women were regarded as 
chattels in his day, Plato, who had reached 
the conclusion that communism was the only 
remedy for the evils arising out of property 
relations, naturally concluded that for the 
evils connected with the human chattel, 
woman, the same remedy was needed. 
Therefore, he advocated the common owner- 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 75 

ship of women as well as of all other forms 
of property. The state was to own and con- 
trol all forms of property, including women. 
Through its officials, the state would, in 
Plato's scheme, regulate procreation and the 
sexual relations generally. Anticipating our 
modern Eugenists of the extreme school, 
Plato provided for the state regulation of 
the mating and breeding of the human 
species. Only those men and women who 
possessed certain physical, mental and moral 
qualities were to be permitted to breed, and 
there was to be no permanent union of a 
particular man with a particular woman. As 
soon as babies were born they were to be 
taken from their mothers and placed in 
communal institutions, in which all mothers 
would nurse all babies except their own with- 
out discrimination or favor. The most 
elaborate precautions were provided against 
any mother being able to recognize her own 
child. Of course, it is evident that in all 
this Plato had only one purpose, namely, 
to insure the confining of procreation to the 



76 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

best developed men and women ; that the un- 
fit were prevented from perpetuating their 
kind. He aimed thus to produce what the 
modern Eugenists call the Super Race. 

Now, it is quite obvious that it is a mis- 
nomer to call Plato's scheme by the high- 
sounding term, Free Love. In the first 
place, the romantic element, the mutual love 
of the man for the woman and the woman for 
the man, hardly enters into it at all. In the 
second place, there is no freedom for the 
individual in the scheme. It is a very 
elaborate scheme of state regulated stirpi- 
culture, which in practice would reduce 
human beings to the level of the animals in 
the stud farm. It is a scheme of compulsory 
mating, not of Free Love. 

Socialism is not even remotely connected 
with either Plato's philosophy or his scheme. 
These reflect the limitations of Athenian 
civilization three centuries before Christ, 
while Socialism, whether considered as a 
philosophy or as a movement, is of modern 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 77 

origin. Yet it is by no means uncommon to 
find critics of Socialism harking back to 
Plato's Republic and making their criti- 
cisms of it part of their indictment of Social- 
ism. 

Ill 
The polar opposite of Plato's ideal of 
sex relationship is the ideal of modern An- 
archism, to which the term " Free Love " 
may be properly applied. The Anarchist 
regards society as being merely an aggrega- 
tion of individuals, and believes that the ag- 
gregation of individuals can have no right 
greater than the single individual can have. 
The essence of liberty, as the Anarchist sees 
it, is the right of the individual to determine 
for himself what is right and what is not 
right. Just as no individual can, without 
tyranny, control the actions of another indi- 
vidual, society as a whole cannot rightly 
control the actions of any individual. Philo- 
sophically and practically, Anarchism is based 
upon the supremacy of the individual. It 
denies the doctrine of social supremacy and 



78 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

responsibility upon which all laws and govern- 
ments and institutions for regulating human 
conduct rest. 

Anarchism is, therefore, opposed to the 
legal forms of marriage, regarding them as 
invasions by society of the liberty of the 
individual. It opposes every interference 
by the state in what it believes to be a matter 
for the individuals immediately concerned to 
regulate according to their own desires. An- 
archism teaches that the only sanction neces- 
sary for the union of a man and woman in 
marriage is the desire for such union by the 
man and the woman; that the duration of the 
union must depend solely upon their will 
and pleasure; that any legal tie which binds 
men and women to one another against their 
will, when they have ceased to love one an- 
other and to regard such union as indispen- 
sable to their happiness, is wrong. The An- 
archist believes that love should be the only 
bond uniting men and women in marriage, 
and that every form of restraint or com- 
pulsion is wrong. If a man and a woman 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 79 

y— ^ — » 

outgrow their love for each other, they should 
be free to dissolve their union without con- 
sulting anybody or asking the permission of 
anybody. And if they desire to enter into 
new unions, they should be free to do so. 
That is Free Love, using that term in its 
true sense, and that is the Anarchist ideal. 

We may not believe in that theory of mar- 
riage. Most of us do not. We may be- 
lieve that in practice it would be certain to 
work infinite hardship and suffering, and that 
it would be a retrogressive step and not a 
step forward. Perhaps most of us do be- 
lieve that. Such opinions, however, ought 
not to blind us to the fact that it is perfectly 
possible for one to hold the Anarchist view 
of marriage, and to apply it in actual life, 
and, at the same time, to believe in and 
practice the strictest monogamy. Dangerous 
as the Anarchist philosophy may be, it is not 
incompatible with a high standard of 
personal conduct. Free Love, as the An- 
archist conceives it, may lead to promis- 
cuity of sexual relations, and many of us 



8o SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

believe that in practice it would certainly do 
so, but the two things are not synonymous. 

On the other hand, legal marriage does 
not insure perfect obedience to the mono- 
gamic code. There is no particular virtue in 
the legal form itself. What counts is the 
recognition of social authority and respon- 
sibility symbolized by the legal form. 
Monogamy is perfectly or imperfectly at- 
tained in proportion to the degree to which 
recognition of that social authority and 
responsibility, supplemented by personal 
loyalty and affection, is effective. That per- 
fect loyalty and chastity are not made certain 
by legal forms is all too unhappily evident 
to all of us. But most of us believe that, 
despite all its shortcomings, despite the 
alarming number of failures and divorces, 
legal marriage does make for greater sta- 
bility of family life than would otherwise 
be possible, and that the stability of fam- 
ily life is a necessary condition of true 
civilization. What we hope for, there- 
fore, is not the abolition of legal marriage, 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 81 

: 

the denial of social authority and respon- 
sibility, but the improvement of marriage, 
the maintenance, and, if necessary, the 
further development, of social authority 
over and responsibility for marriage. Pos- 
sibly it will be found that the improvement 
of marriage, its greater permanence, and its 
greater efficiency as a promoter of monog- 
amy, will result from a general social and 
economic readjustment, rather than from al- 
terations in the laws affecting marriage 
specially designed to that end. 

IV 

Between the sex servitude advocated 
by Plato and the denial of social authority 
in the Anarchist ideal, both comprehended 
in the general unthinking denunciation of 
" Free Love," we shall find many very dif- 
ferent forms of family life and sex relation- 
ship, to every one of which the same 
term has been uncritically applied. They 
have all been as uncritically denounced as 
" Socialistic," their shortcomings have been 



82 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

l 



charged against the Socialists, notwithstand- 
ing the fact that they were generally of reli- 
gious origin and significance, and rarely as- 
sociated with movements remotely or closely 
connected with Socialism. 

We have, for example, opposition to mar- 
riage on the part of certain sects of religious 
celibates, like the Shakers. Because the 
Shakers practiced communism among them- 
selves, the unfair and the uncritical have 
taken the accusations made against the 
Shakers and woven them into their indict- 
ment of Socialism. The Shakers were ac- 
cused of being Free Lovers, of attempting 
to destroy the home, therefore the charge is 
made against the Socialists! Curiously 
enough, however, the intensely religious char- 
acteristics of Shakerism are ignored, and the 
Socialists are denounced as Atheists. 

The truth is, of course, that no sort of re- 
lation exists between the teachings and prac- 
tices of Ann Lee and her followers and the 
teachings and practices of modern Socialism. 
The communism of the Shakers, like their 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 83 

contempt for marriage and their glorifica- 
tion of celibacy and their practice of confes- 
sion, was exclusively a religious practice, the 
result of their special interpretation of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. It seems absurd to ap- 
ply the term Free Love to their peculiar view 
of sexual relations. They regarded mar- 
riage as at best an evil, viewed with con- 
tempt the " generative order " to which it 
pertained and extolled absolute celibacy as 
the highest virtue. Their four cardinal prin- 
ciples, Virginal Purity, Christian Com- 
munism, Confession of Sin and Separation 
from the World, as well as most of their 
theological beliefs concerning the Duality of 
the Godhead, the Millennium, the Second 
Coming of Christ, and similar matters, were 
quite commonly held by many Christian 
sects in mediaeval times. Shakerism and all 
similar movements are properly connected, 
not with Socialism, but with the development 
of Christianity. 

We find the term Free Love applied with 
more reason to the various forms of group 



84 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

marriage and sex communism which have 
been advocated and practiced by various 
sects, ancient and modern. From 1847 unt ^ 
1879 the followers of John Humphrey 
Noyes, the Perfectionists of Oneida, ad- 
vocated and practiced sex communism 
through what they termed " complex mar- 
riage." All the men of the community were 
jointly married to all the women of the com- 
munity, so that every man was husband to 
every woman and every woman wife to every 
man. 

Like Shakerism, Perfectionism was es- 
sentially of Christian origin and in nowise 
connected with Socialism as that term is prop- 
erly understood. Noyes derived his ideas 
of communism in goods and communism in 
sex relations from the New Testament, from 
the story of the day of Pentecost. Salva- 
tion from sin through the grace of Christ, 
the duality of God's nature, the possibility 
of attaining perfect holiness were funda- 
mental to his teaching. In every respect, 
Perfectionism was a modern revival of a very 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 85 

ancient form of religious sectarianism which 
flourished in the first few centuries of Chris- 
tendom, and again in mediaeval times, as wit- 
ness the Apostolicans, the Adamites, and 
similar mediaeval sects. 

Yet another form of sex relationship and 
family life claims our attention as being op- 
posed to monogamy and the form of family 
life based upon it — polygamy. Whether 
we limit ourselves to Mormonism in our ex- 
amination of polygamy, or go back to the 
time of the Anabaptists, we shall find that, 
leaving primitive and uncivilized peoples out 
of account, polygamy almost invariably ap- 
pears as a principle of religious sectarianism, 
with religious sanctions. Nowhere does it 
appear connected, however remotely, with 
the development of modern Socialism, the 
movement of the working class to eman- 
cipate itself from economic exploitation and 
tyranny. 

To sum up this phase of our discussion: 
there can be no wisdom or justice in the in- 
discriminate lumping together under the 



86 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

term Free Love forms of sex relationship so 
different as the state regulated stirpiculture 
of Plato, the celibacy of Ann Lee and her 
disciples, the group marriage of the Perfec- 
tionists, and the polygamy of Jan of Leyden 
and Brigham Young. Nor can there be any 
wisdom or justice in charging to the account 
of the Socialist our criticisms of any of these, 
not one of which was connected in any degree 
whatsoever with the Socialist movement, and 
all of which, with the exception of Plato's 
scheme, were of religious origin — offshoots 
of Christianity. 

V 

Although it is somewhat of a digression, 
it is worthy of notice that the sex relation- 
ships advocated and practiced by many of the 
religious sects combined with their romantic 
religious mysticism much of the harsher 
pagan utilitarianism of Plato. Not infre- 
quently, we find theories of eugenics and stir- 
piculture advocated, and, to a limited extent, 
practiced. 

Take the Shakers, for example: Elder 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 87 

Eades, one of their ablest publicists and 
leaders, likened the " state of mankind " to 
a house, consisting of basement, ground floor 
and upper story. Those living on the " up- 
per floor " are the true Christians, for they, 
like Christ, are celibates. They have ad- 
vanced beyond the world of the flesh with 
all its lusts and affections. Their concern is 
with the " soul-world " only. Risen above the 
11 generative order," they despise marriage 
and procreation and dwell in celibacy, man's 
highest state. Those dwelling on the 
"ground floor" are inferior mortals who 
still live in the " generative stage." Their 
concern is with the physical life, with the 
body and the mind. For them marriage and 
procreation are permissible. Their inter- 
mediate state is well enough in its secular 
way, but they cannot be Christians on the 
" ground floor," because Christ did not 
dwell there. They are ruled by the flesh and 
its lusts, the love of individuals one for an- 
other, and by the idolatries of parentage. 
Those who dwell in the " basement " are still 



88 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

inferior. They are the weak of body, mind 
and morals. For all such, procreation is 
wrong and should be prevented. 

Another of the Shaker leaders, Elder 
Prescott, while holding to the ideal of celi- 
bacy, vigorously advocated scientific regula- 
tion of procreation among those on the 
" ground floor " and the prevention of pro- 
creation by the dwellers in the " basement." 
From Plato to the most radical Eugenist of 
today, the argument has never been more 
baldly stated: 

" What is the reason man does not know 
how to improve his own race, as well as he 
knows how to improve the ox, the sheep, the 
horse, and the feathered tribes? He does 
know how — it is by observing the same law, 
walking by the same rule, and minding the 
same things. At our state and county fairs 
we see that the lower order of animals has 
been carried to a high degree of perfection 
by stirpiculture or scientific propagation; and 
it is by the same means that the human race 
can be improved physically, i, e., by scientific 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 89 

selection and combination in obedience to 
certain given laws of reproduction. As 
things are, multitudes of persons of both 
sexes are no more suitable to reproduce hu- 
man beings in the image of God than 
the roach-backed, crooked-legged, spindle- 
shanked, slab-sided, Indian ponies are suit- 
able for generating the best types of the 
noble horse! " * 

Precisely the same views were held by 
John Humphrey Noyes and his followers, 
the Perfectionists, and to some extent prac- 
ticed within their institution of " complex 
marriage." 2 It is a strange mixture of reli- 
gious mysticism and secular utilitarianism 
which one finds in these religious communi- 
ties! 

VI 

It is important to remember that the 
cry of Free Love, now raised against the 
Socialist movement, to prejudice the minds of 

1 Quoted by Hinds, American Communities (Edition of 
1908) pp. 56-57. 

2 See e.g., Scientific Propagation, by J. H, N0YE3 
(pamphlet). 



90 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

the people against it, has been raised against 
many other popular movements. There is 
hardly a great popular movement in history, 
whether religious or secular, against which 
the charge of seeking to abolish marriage 
and family relations has not been brought by 
its enemies. The noblest men and women in 
all ages have been subjected to this partic- 
ularly vicious attack. The charge has been 
made against the Catholic Church by fanat- 
ical Protestants and against Protestantism by 
fanatical Catholics. It was made against the 
Quakers, and against the Abolitionists. 
The pioneers of the Woman Suffrage move- 
ment were bitterly assailed as advocates of 
Free Love. The same charge was made 
against the Chartists in England in the early 
part of the nineteenth century. It was 
hurled at the followers of Fremont, the 
founders of the present Republican Party, 
during Fremont's campaign in 1856. 3 

The charge was never directed with 

3 Cf. Applied Socialism, by John Spargo, Chapter IX, 
for a more detailed account of this. 




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THE MOTHER'S FEAR 91 

greater energy and bitterness against any hu- 
man being than against the greatest and 
noblest American of all — Abraham Lin- 
coln. Incredible as it may seem to us today, 
Lincoln had to bear the insulting charge of 
advocating Free Love ! Yes, Lincoln, 

" A man that matched the mountains, and compelled 
The stars to look our way and honor us " 

bore that with many another indignity. No 
sooner had he been nominated by the Re- 
publican Party, in i860, than the attack be- 
gan. There was, for example, the cartoon, 
familiar in every household, entitled " The 
Republican Party Going to the Right 
House," showing Lincoln riding into a 
lunatic asylum, astride a rail carried by 
Horace Greeley. Behind Lincoln march his 
followers, a motley crew of " long haired 
men and short haired women," each pro- 
claiming his or her special fad or folly. 
There is the woman who follows Lincoln be- 
cause she feels " a passional attraction " 
every time she sees " his lovely face." 



92 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

There is the man who cries out, " I represent 
the Free Love element, and expect to have 
free license to carry out its principles." 
Close by is the man — a familiar friend — 
who announces, " I want religion abolished, 
and the book of Mormon made the standard 
of morality." Behind him come the negro 
who wants it understood that the white 
man has no rights which the negro is bound 
to respect; the loafer who wants " every- 
body to have a share of everybody else's 
property," and so on. As a fitting climax to 
the whole outrageous assault, Lincoln is rep- 
resented as addressing these followers and 
saying: "Now, my friends, I'm almost in 
and the Millennium is going to begin, so ask 
what you will and it shall be granted ! " 

When we resurrect this infamous car- 
toon from oblivion, now that Lincoln's fame 
is the most resplendent in our national his- 
tory, and his name the best beloved, we 
realize that the charge of promoting Free 
Love is a poisoned arrow rarely absent from 
the quiver of the cowardly and unscrupulous 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 93 

defenders of Privilege and foes of Prog- 
ress. Today the charge is made against the 
Socialist movement — made by dignitaries of 
the Christian Church, by eminent political 
leaders and publicists — with as little truth 
and justice as against Abraham Lincoln, the 
Liberator. 

VII 

Putting aside, as wholly irrelevant to an 
intelligent and candid discussion of Social- 
ism, all such schemes as those of Plato 
and Campanella, of Adamites, Apostol- 
icans, Shakers, Perfectionists and Mormons, 
let us see what evidence there is to support 
the charge that Socialism is antagonistic to 
monogamic marriage and family life. 

At the very outset of our investigation 
we encounter, in the writings of individual 
Socialists, some very outspoken criticisms of 
marriage and the family as they exist today, 
together with prophecies that in the Socialist 
society of the future little or no social author- 
ity or control over the union of the sexes will 
exist. In some cases, it must be admitted, 



94 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

the authors of these criticisms have been 
prominently identified with the Socialist 
movement. The opponents of Socialism 
have carefully winnowed the vast literature 
of Socialism and gathered together a sheaf 
of such criticisms and prophecies, which they 
have published broadcast to bolster the 
charge of Free Love. Let us, then, pay 
them due attention. 

For the sake of convenience we will take 
the most outspoken of these criticisms and 
prophecies and divide them into two groups 
— those which come from individual Social- 
ists, of no particular standing in the Social- 
ist movement, however eminent they may 
otherwise be, and those which come from 
representative Socialists of acknowledged 
eminence in the Socialist movement itself. 

To the first of these groups belongs, very 
definitely, the prophecy of that splendid but 
ill-starred genius whose melancholy ruin 
ranks among the most tragic episodes of liter- 
ary history — Oscar Wilde. Though he 
was never identified with the Socialist move- 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 95 

ment — perhaps because he was too aggres- 
sively individualistic — Wilde, for a brief 
space of time, called himself a Socialist. He 
wrote, it will be remembered, The Soul of 
Man Under Socialism, in which his Utopian 
conception of Socialism is set forth in noble 
and beautiful prose. In it we find the sweep- 
ing declaration, quite unqualified, that " So- 
cialism annihilates family life." For this as- 
sertion there is offered no shred of authority, 
no evidence, no reasoned argument to show 
that the annihilation of family life must re- 
sult from the social readjustments upon which 
Socialists are determined and agreed. What 
we have is the bare assertion of Oscar Wilde. 
Immediately, a number of questions crowd 
the brain — how authoritative an exponent 
of Socialism is Oscar Wilde? — Is his So- 
cialism representative, typical of the Social- 
ism which is inspiring millions? — How 
much does he know of his subject? We seek 
an answer to our questions in his essay, com- 
paring his utterances, and the spirit of them, 
with those of the recognized leaders of So- 



96 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

cialist thought. And soon we discover that he 
is not a Socialist at all, if we are to judge So- 
cialism by Marx and Lassalle and Liebknecht 
and Kautsky and Bebel and Vandervelde and 
Jaures and Hyndman and Hillquit ; or by the 
platforms of the Socialist parties of the 
world. He is rather, like Prince Kropotkin, 
an Anarchist-Communist. Years later, in 
his De Profundis, written while in prison, 
Wilde wrote of Kropotkin that his was one 
of the two most perfect lives he had come 
across — " a man with a soul of that beauti- 
ful white Christ which seems coming out of 
Russia." It was the praise of the master 
by his disciple. 

The evidences that he was an Anarchist- 
Communist, rather than a Socialist, are 
numerous. Thus, in his essay he insists over 
and over again that there shall be no govern- 
ment in his ideal society: " What is needed 
is Individualism. If the Socialism is to be 
Authoritarian; if there are Governments 
armed with economic power as they are now 
with political power; if, in a word, we are 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 97 

to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last 
state of man will be worse than the first." 
Again: " It is clear, then, that no Authori- 
tarian Socialism will do. . . . Every man 
must be left quite free to choose his own 
work. No form of compulsion must be exer- 
cised over him. . . . And by work I simply 
mean activity of any kind." And again: 
" But I confess that many of the Socialistic 
views that I have come across seem to me 
to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not 
of actual compulsion. Of course, authority 
and compulsion are out of the question. All 
association must be quite voluntary. It is 
only in voluntary associations that man is 
fine." 

These are the ideas of an Anarchist-Com- 
munist, not of a Socialist as that term is 
properly used. When we read in Wilde's 
essay that " Socialism annihilates family life. 
. . . With the abolition of private property, 
marriage in its present form must disap- 
pear," we know that Wilde was really think- 
ing of Anarchist Communism and not of 



98 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

■ !■! i i 

Socialism as we understand it. And even 
were that not the case, even if Wilde had 
been the most orthodox of Marx's disciples, 
it would still be sufficient to remind our 
critics that Wilde embarked upon the dan- 
gerous ocean of prophecy upon his own re- 
sponsibility; that for the personal views of 
Wilde the Socialist movement cannot be held 
responsible. 

To the same group we must assign the 
declaration of a very different writer, Pro- 
fessor Karl Pearson, author of The Ethic 
of Free Thought. Although a professed So- 
cialist, and a learned and brilliant writer 
upon certain biological subjects, Professor 
Pearson has never been actively identified 
with the Socialist movement, nor can he be 
justly called a representative Socialist writer. 
Professor Pearson speculates upon the prob- 
able influence of the political and economic 
emancipation of women upon marriage. He 
reaches a conclusion that appears to involve 
serious difficulty: " For the non-childbear- 
ing woman the sex relationship, both as to 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 99 

form and substance, ought to be a pure ques- 
tion of taste, in which neither the society nor 
the state would have any need to interfere, a 
free sexual union, a relation solely of mutual 
sympathy and affection, its form and direc- 
tion varying according to the wants and feel- 
ings of the individuals." 4 So far, we have 
the Anarchist ideal, entire freedom from so- 
cial authority and control. But it will be 
observed that Professor Pearson confines this 
freedom from social interference to the child- 
less unions. But what of those unions which 
result in children? 

When Professor Pearson reaches this 
question he abandons his Anarchistic ideal of 
pure voluntarism, and turns to a form of 
state supervision which is essentially despotic. 
The state now must interfere, for the state 
is to regulate the number of births. He 
harks back to the teachings of Aristotle and 
Plato: the state is to regulate procreation. 
11 If the state is to guarantee wages, it is 

4 Karl Pearson, The Ethic of Free Thought, quoted 
by Barker, British Socialism, p. 339. 



ioo SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

bound in self-protection to provide that no 
person shall be born without its consent. 
The state is to sanction the number of births; 
all others are immoral, because anti-social. 
. . . An unsanctioned birth would receive no 
recognition from the state, and in times of 
over-population it might be necessary to 
punish, positively or negatively, both father 
and mother." 5 Surely, here we turn away 
from Free Love to state despotism of the 
worst type ! 

On the one hand Professor Pearson's ideal 
is purely Anarchistic, utterly repudiating so- 
cial authority and responsibility in the regu- 
lation of marriage. On the other hand it 
becomes frightfully bureaucratic, utterly de- 
nying personal freedom and placing human 
mothers on a level with brood mares. It is 
inconceivable that the citizens of a free 
democracy would tolerate the bureaucratic 
regulation of procreation. Such a scheme 
would require the power of a dominant ruling 
class to impose it upon a subject class in some 

5 Pearson, op. cit., quoted by Barker, op. at., p. 347. 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 101 

I 

such fashion as the Jesuits imposed the stirpi- 
cultural regulations of Campanula's Utopian 
scheme upon the natives of Paraguay. Prob- 
ably nine hundred and ninety-nine Socialists 
out of every thousand would repudiate Pro- 
fessor Pearson's scheme. It is of interest 
and value only as the result of one man's 
rather reckless speculation and hazy think- 
ing. 

VIII 

Of all the statements upon the subject by 
individual writers who cannot be said to be 
representative Socialists, used by the anti- 
Socialists in their propaganda, the statements 
by Oscar Wilde and Professor Pearson are 
the most sweeping. They are certainly the 
most important by virtue of the eminence of 
their authors in certain fields of intellectual 
labor. Let us turn now to those writers 
whose prominence in the Socialist move- 
ment itself lends to their utterances special 
force : 

The foremost Socialist of our generation 
was the late August Bebel, the veteran leader 



ioz SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

of the German Social Democracy. No one 
will deny that he personified the Socialist 
movement as fully as any one human being 
could do. It is impossible to plead that he 
was not a representative Socialist. His long 
acknowledged eminence in the international 
Socialist movement lends great weight to his 
every utterance. It is not surprising, there- 
fore, that the enemies of Socialism have 
seized upon certain passages in his writings 
which vigorously assail the present marriage 
system. 

In his famous book, Woman and Social- 
ism, Bebel attacks legal marriage as a form of 
slavery and sex subjection, and argues that it 
must disappear with the elevation of women 
to a plane of political, economic and cultural 
equality with men. In its place, he predicts, 
there will be simply a voluntary union of in- 
dividuals, a union depending solely upon af- 
fection, with which society has nothing what- 
ever to do, and which the individuals can 
terminate at will. There can be no mistak- 
ing the meaning of the following paragraph, 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 103 

in which Bebel sets forth his idea of the re- 
lation of the sexes in the future : 

" In the choice of love woman is free just 
as man is free. She woos and is wooed and 
has no other inducement to bind herself than 
her own free will. The contract between the 
two lovers is of a private nature as in primi- 
tive times. The gratification of the sexual 
impulse is as strictly the personal affair of 
the individual as the gratification of every 
other natural instinct. No one has to give 
an account of him or herself, and no third 
person has the slightest right of interven- 
tion." 

It is impossible to read Bebel's work with 
candor and intelligence without reaching the 
conclusion that the ideal it preaches is Free 
Love. This is not the same thing as sexual 
promiscuity, nor is it incompatible with strict 
monogamy. What is meant is that the force 
of love alone ought to bind man and wife 
together, without any external compulsions, 
either of government, economic dependence 
or social customs ; that every marriage which 



io 4 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

depends upon any or all of these external 
compulsions, which love alone is not strong 
enough to perpetuate, ought to be dissolved 
in the interests of morality and happiness. 

This is the personal opinion of August 
Bebel, for which he alone is to be held re- 
sponsible. It is probable that not one per 
cent, of the Socialists of America, or of the 
world for that matter, agree with it. The 
Socialist movement is no more to be charged 
with responsibility for Bebel's idea of the 
probable future development of marriage 
and family life, than for the views on vege- 
tarianism, agriculture and the fertilization of 
soils contained in the same volume. It is no 
more to be charged with responsibility for 
Bebel's views on any of these subjects than 
for the views which the present writer has 
freely expressed upon the laws of popula- 
tion and the relation of advancing civiliza- 
tion to such phenomena as the decline of 
fecundity and maternal capacity, 6 for ex- 

6 See, e. g., The Common Sense of the Milk Question, 
by John Spargo. 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 105 

i 

ample. Bebel himself, with his usual can- 
dor, has warned us of this, but it suits the 
critics of Socialism to ignore the warning. 7 
It would be utterly disingenuous to dis- 
miss the subject with this observation, and to 
ignore the fact that other Socialists of 
acknowledged standing have expressed views 
quite similar to those of the great German 

7 ". . . This complete solution of the Women's Ques- 
tion is as unattainable as the solution of the Labor Ques- 
tion under the existing social and political institutions, 

" My fellow Socialists will agree with the last prop- 
osition, but I am not at present in a position to affirm 
that they will agree to the manner in which I foresee its 
realization. I must therefore, request readers, and 
especially opponents, to regard the following statements 
as the expression of my personal opinions, and to direct 
any attacks they think fit to make against me alone. . . . 
Indeed / have every reason to believe that my explicit 
request twill be disregarded by a certain number of them. 
They must be left to the promptings of their own hearts." 
Thus Bebel wrote in the Preface to Woman and Social- 
ism. How accurately he judged the honesty of his 
opponents may be judged by the fact that an examina- 
tion of over six hundred books, pamphlets and magazine 
articles in which his words are quoted to prove that 
Socialists advocate Free Love, shows that not in a single 
instance is there any intimation of the important fact that 
Bebel specifically states that he is unable to claim that 
his fellow Socialists accept his views! — J. S. 



io6 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

_ . . . 

Socialist. We may cite the eminent collabo- 
rators, William Morris and Ernest Belfort 
Bax as typical of those of a not inconsider- 
able body of Socialist writers who adhere 
more or less closely to Bebel. Morris, in 
his Utopian romance, News from Nowhere, 
pictures complete voluntarism in the union 
of the sexes, everybody " free to come and 
go as he or she pleases." 8 In Socialism: 
Its Growth and Outcome, Morris and Bax 
argue that marriage as it now exists is a 
property relation merely, and that the aboli- 
tion of the economic dependence of women 
would necessarily lead to the abolition of the 
marriage system resting upon it: 

" The present marriage system was based 
on the general supposition of the economic 
dependence of the woman on the man, and 
the consequent necessity for his making pro- 
vision for her which she can legally enforce. 
This basis would disappear with the advent 
of social economic freedom, and no binding 

8 News from Nowhere, Tenth Edition, p. 90. 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 107 

contract would be necessary between the par- 
ties as regards livelihood. . . . Thus a new 
development of the family would take place, 
on the basis, ;iot of a predetermined life-long 
business arrangement to be formally and nom- 
inally held to, irrespective of circumstances, 
but on mutual inclination and affection, an as- 
sociation terminable at the will of either 
party. There would be no vestige of repro- 
bation weighing on the dissolution of one tie 
and the forming of another." 9 

Bax has vigorously championed the same 
view in numerous essays. A typical state- 
ment of his position is the following: 

" Socialism will strike at the root at once 
of compulsory monogamy and of prostitu- 
tion by inaugurating an era of marriage 
based on free choice and intention, and char- 
acterized by the absence of external coercion. 
For where the wish for the maintenance of 
the marriage relation remains, there external 
coercion is unnecessary; where it is neces- 

9 Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, Second Edition, 
London, 1896, p. 299. 



108 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

sary, because the wish has disappeared, there 
it is undesirable." 10 

It is no more than just to point out in this 
connection the fact that upon all matters con- 
cerning the relation of Socialism to women 
Bax holds a peculiar position in the move- 
ment. His anti-feminist views have been al- 
most universally condemned and ridiculed. 
He is a notorious opponent of the demand 
for equal suffrage regardless of sex which 
holds a conspicuous place in the programme 
of every Socialist party in the world. He 
argues that women are organically inferior 
to men, and ought, for that reason, to be ex- 
cluded from the right to vote, just as children 
and aliens belonging to an essentially lower 
race are excluded ! He adopts all the argu- 
ments of the conventional anti-suffragists, in- 
cluding the fear that women, if granted the 
ballot, will establish a sex tyranny and sub- 
ject men to their rule! n All this is not an 

10 Bax, Outlooks from the New Standpoint, pp. 159- 
160. 

11 See, e. g., in his Essays in Socialism, the following 
essays: "A Bundle of Fallacies;" "The * Monstrous 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 109 

argument against his views concerning the 
probable nature of sex relationships under 
Socialism, but it is an argument against an 
uncritical acceptance of them as typical of 
the views generally held by Socialists. 

IX 

We cannot deny that some Socialists have 
preached Free Love as the ideal form of sex 
relationship. But we can and must deny that 
the realization of the Socialist programme 
necessarily leads to that ideal. We can and 
must deny that the Socialist movement ac- 
cepts it. We can and must affirm that Free 
Love is based upon the Anarchist philosophy 
of the independence of the individual and 
the supremacy of the individual will; that it 
involves a complete denial of the Socialist 
philosophy of the interdependence of all in- 
dividuals and the consequent supremacy of 
society. The non-interference of society and 
the unrestricted freedom of individual action 

Regiment ' of Womanhood ; " u Some Current Fallacies 
on the Woman Question;" "Female Suffrage and Its 
Implications." 



no SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

in matters of such social consequence as mar- 
riage and childbearing are the postulates of 
crude individualism, no matter how eminent 
the Socialist who embraces them may be. 

There is nothing in the philosophy or pro- 
gramme of Socialism which is incompatible 
with the maintenance of the private family 
based upon monogamic marriage. Probably 
ninety-nine per cent, of the Socialists in the 
world believe that Socialism would result in 
a much greater degree of monogamy than 
now obtains, and, as a result, in a greater de- 
gree of stability and permanence in marriage. 
They believe that the economic readjustment 
essential to the realization of the Socialist 
programme would have the effect of making 
mutual affection the only reason for con- 
tracting marriage, thus doing away with love- 
less marriages for mercenary reasons, which 
so often prove failures and end in divorce. 
They believe, too, that when women are eco- 
nomically equal with men, and politically 
equal with them, they will insist upon a single 
standard of morals for both sexes — upon 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR m 

men being as strictly monogamous as they re- 
quire women to be. 

Lamartine, in his rhetorical History of the 
Revolution of 1848, repeats the ancient apho- 
rism that " Communism of goods leads, as a 
necessary consequence, to communism of 
wives, children and parents," and many a 
foolish criticism of Socialism has been based 
upon it. But in truth the criticism is wholly 
irrelevant. Modern Socialism does not aim 
at " communism of goods." It may be freely 
conceded that, in olden times, when produc- 
tion by hand labor obtained, it was practi- 
cally impossible successfully to combine com- 
munism in the distribution of goods with the 
maintenance of separate family life. There 
was always the danger of hoarding by the 
separate families to the prejudice of the 
community. There was also the very real 
danger of overpopulation. Aristotle recog- 
nized this more than two thousand years ago. 

But modern Socialism is not seeking to 
bring about communism in goods. It is not 
aiming at the abolition of private property. 



H2 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 



What it is aiming at is the collective owner- 
ship of those means of production which are 
now used by the few to exploit the many. 
Under capitalism, we have cooperative pro- 
duction by masses of workers, using privately 
owned machinery and tools, with the result 
that the owners of the machinery and tools, 
without laboring as producers, can and do 
receive more of the products than the pro- 
ducers. Socialism would simply shift the 
ownership of machinery and tools to the com- 
munity, deny the non-producers' right to ex- 
ploit the producers, and combine collective 
ownership of the means of production with 
private ownership of the goods produced, the 
workers receiving according to their labor. 

Acceptance of this programme does not 
imply the acceptance of any particular theory 
or forecast of the future development of 
marriage and family life. That this is the 
case is easily shown: consider the Socialist 
principle of collective ownership and control 
coupled with private enjoyment of the 
utilities derived therefrom as illustrated by 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 113 

our streets and highways. Does the collec- 
tive ownership of streets and highways im- 
peril marriage and the family? Would these 
institutions be safer if streets and highways 
were owned by private individuals or by cor- 
porations? If not, is there any good rea- 
son for believing that the extension of the 
same principle to the ownership of street 
railways and highways of steel rails would 
imperil the family and the home? Is there 
any reason to suppose that family life is less 
safe where public ownership of railways pre- 
vails, as in Australia, for example? Sup- 
pose we applied the principle of collective 
ownership to telephones and telegraphs, to 
the supply of electric light and power, to the 
express service, to the water supply and the 
ice supply, is there any good reason for be- 
lieving that the result would be Free Love 
and the destruction of private family life? 
Has that been the result where these things 
have been tried? 

Carry the principle farther, apply it to 
the industrial activities of the nation: sup- 



ii4 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

pose that, as a result of the revolt of the 
people against the exactions of the Meat 
Trust, the business of raising, killing, packing 
and selling meat were taken over by the 
people, through the government. Would 
the fact that we bought our meat from a state 
or municipal shop, as we now buy stamps 
from the post office, knowing that we were 
not being exploited by a parasitic corpora- 
tion, weaken the bonds uniting husbands and 
wives, lessen our love for our children, or 
otherwise imperil family life? Would such 
evils result from the collective ownership of 
the coal mines, the substitution of organized 
society as a whole for the Steel Trust, or the 
Oil Trust? 

But there are other forms of collective 
ownership than ownership by the govern- 
ment. The cooperation of workers in vol- 
untary copartnership, cooperatively owning 
their tools and sharing their products, may 
well become a very important part of the 
economic organization of the Socialist com- 
monwealth. Let us suppose, then, that the 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 115 

workers in a given industry, say tailoring, de- 
velop cooperative enterprise to such an ex- 
tent that whoever buys a suit of clothes will 
know that the tailors who made the clothes 
got the full value of their labor, that no part 
of the price of the clothes represents surplus 
value in the shape of rent, interest or profit. 
Will that fact be likely to make husbands and 
wives forsake each other and seek new matri- 
monial alliances, or to make parents love their 
children less, or in any other way imperil the 
peace and harmony of family life? 

An honest answer to these questions will 
prove the reductio ad absurdum of the criti- 
cism we are considering. It is not without 
significance that among all the thousands of 
anti-Socialists writers who have made the 
criticism, not one seems to have made any at- 
tempt to demonstrate in what manner the ac- 
complishment of the Socialist programme 
would tend to weaken or destroy the family. 
The nearest they ever come to that issue is 
to declare that the private family could not 
exist if private property were abolished and 



n6 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

communism completely established. Since 
Socialists do not aim at the abolition of pri- 
vate property and do not seek to bring about 
communism, the declaration has no bearing 
upon the subject. 

Too much stress cannot be laid upon the 
fact that it is no part of the aim of modern 
Socialism to bring about a particular form of 
marriage or family organization. Its one 
aim is the reorganization of our political and 
economic life to the end that there shall be 
no exploitation of workers by idlers through 
the channels of rent, interest and profit, and 
no class warfare as a necessary outcome of 
such exploitation, the exploited and the ex- 
ploiters struggling for the advancement of 
their specific economic interests. In a word, 
the aim of Socialism is the attainment of 
complete political and industrial democracy. 
Individual Socialists may join to the most 
honest and loyal service to that aim equally 
honest and loyal service to other ends — to 
vegetarianism, anti-vivisection, religion or 
anti-religion, proof of the existence of intel- 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 117 

ligent beings on Mars, demonstration of the 
Baconian authorship of the plays attributed 
to Shakespeare, and so on — but these accre- 
tions are no concern of the Socialist move- 
ment. 

x 

Of course, the reorganization of society 
upon Socialist lines must of necessity affect 
the family. It is impossible to imagine such 
a fundamental change being accomplished 
without influencing one of the fundamental in- 
stitutions of society. Every great compre- 
hensive change in the economic structure of 
society heretofore has had a marked influence 
upon family life, and we cannot in reason ex- 
pect that so comprehensive a change as So- 
cialism will prove an exception to the general 
law of social development. It is this fact 
which causes so many Socialists and others to 
attempt to forecast in detail the exact nature 
of the developments of marriage and family 
life which Socialism will bring about. 

Now, only the foolishly narrow-minded 
would condemn or attempt to discourage hon- 



u8 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

est and serious thought upon a matter of such 
vital importance to the life of the race, for 
such thinking is a necessary condition of prog- 
ress. But the Socialist movement is not 
committed to any of the conclusions reached 
by these individual speculations. There is 
no Socialist theory of marriage. 

We believe that the reorganization of so- 
ciety upon the basis of collective ownership 
and democratic control of the economic forces 
will put an end to those evils which now men- 
ace the integrity and stability of family life. 
We believe that marriage for economic rea- 
sons will disappear with the abolition of eco- 
nomic classes and economic exploitation. 
We believe that the greater part of prostitu- 
tion with its attendant evils will disappear. 
We believe the elevation of family life will 
result. We do not believe that anything 
but good can result from these changes. 
Whatever developments in family organiza- 
tion take place in the Socialist society of the 
future will be in response to the collective 
will of men and women free from political 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 119 

or economic tyranny. Why need we fear 
that a society in which women are politically 
and economically free and equal with men will 
tend to lessen monogamy? Ought we not 
rather to believe and hope that by increasing 
the power of women, whose monogamous in- 
stincts have been much more highly devel- 
oped than the monogamous instincts of men, 
monogamy will be greatly strengthened? 

In truth, there is no need to fear Free 
Love or polygamy or group marriage, or poly- 
andry. The whole trend of social and eco- 
nomic evolution is away from these and to- 
ward a more perfect monogamy. Anton 
Menger is undoubtedly right when he says 
that the defects of Free Love are so numer- 
ous and so serious that, even if all the polit- 
ical and religious forces which now buttress 
monogamic marriage were to be swept away, 
" the masses of the people would themselves 
refuse to permit it." 12 And Frederick 
Engels is right when he bases his hope for 
the attainment of a more perfect monogamy 

12 Anton Menger, Neue Staatslehre, p. 132. 



i2o SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

upon the economic emancipation of women: 
" Remove the economic considerations that 
now force women to submit to the customary 
disloyalty of men, and you will place women 
on an equal footing with men. All present 
experiences prove that this will tend much 
more strongly to make men truly monoga- 
mous, than to make women polyandrous." 13 
The realization of true monogamy will be 
made possible by the elevation of woman to 
the plane of economic and political equality 
with man. To that end the Socialist move- 
ment is striving. 

The Socialist ideal is not compatible with 
the destruction of social authority and re- 
sponsibility comprehended by the term Free 
Love. Nor is it compatible with the denial 
of personal freedom essential to all schemes 
for compulsory mating and applying the 
methods of animal breeding to human beings. 
The fundamental democracy of Socialism is 
as inimical to the one as to the other. The 

13 Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Pri- 
vate Property and the State, Chapter III. 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 121 

race cannot be elevated by the degradation 
of individuals, whether in the direction of 
the harem or the stud-farm. 

The Socialist ideal involves a deeper sense 
of social interdependence and responsibility, 
combined with a larger personal freedom, 
than has ever yet existed. All the observable 
tendencies of social evolution point to the 
further development of social sanctions for 
marriage and parentage, rather than to their 
progressive abandonment. There are abun- 
dant signs of an increasing recognition of the 
need for well-considered collective action aim- 
ing at encouragement of marriage and pro- 
creation by the fit and worthy and the dis- 
couragement of marriage and procreation 
by the unfit and unworthy. There is an 
increasing demand for education for par- 
enthood, both for fathers and mothers. 
Especially is the education necessary for 
mothers : too long we have permitted women 
to enter the maternal wilderness blindfolded. 
Education for motherhood will mean that 
maternal functions will be chosen deliber- 



122 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

ately and intelligently, with a full sense of 
all their attendant perils and responsibilities. 

There is a demand, too, for the adoption 
of a sane and humane policy of permanently 
segregating the victims of mental defects and 
diseases believed to be transmissible. These 
provide an enormous proportion of the re- 
cruits to the ranks of the degenerate classes 
— the habitual drunkards, the prostitutes, the 
purveyors of venereal contagion, the criminal 
and vicious classes in general. It is probable 
that, long before the Socialist goal is attained, 
measures will be taken to segregate per- 
manently all known victims of mental or 
physical evils known to be incurable and trans- 
missible, and to prevent them from burden- 
ing society with their undesirable offspring. 

There is little reason to doubt that such 
social safeguards as these will be considerably 
developed in the Socialist society of the fu- 
ture. Side by side with that increase of 
social responsibility will be developed a larger 
freedom of personal choice and action than 
has ever existed, as a result of the breaking 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 123 

down of economic compulsions. Men and 
women will be free to marry for love and love 
only. Probably, too, divorce will be made 
more easy and the cessation of love be freely 
recognized as a sufficient reason for the dis- 
solution of marriage ties, especially where 
there are no children concerned. 

So much we may say with assurance con- 
cerning the future of marriage and the 
family. But when we try to go beyond these 
limits, to forecast the future and picture it 
in detail as we picture the present, we enter 
that realm which is ruled by no law other 
than the dreamer fashions for his own dream. 
If an individual Socialist seeks to forecast 
that future and tells of elaborate systems of 
endowed or salaried motherhood, we may 
listen with what degree of interest and faith 
we will: his vision is his alone, and is in no- 
wise a part of the Socialist programme. 

XI 

The thoughtful mother will not fear Social- 
ism when it is presented to her properly de- 



124 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

limited. She will separate the chaff from the 
wheat; the non-essential Utopian vision of the 
individual from the great essential collec- 
tive purpose. She will not be afraid that the 
elevation of her sisters to a plane of political 
and economic equality with men will demor- 
alize them and cause them to use their power 
to destroy monogamy and the private family. 
She will not be afraid that the abolition of 
class exploitation, which gives rise to poverty, 
vice, crime, disease and war, will harm a 
single human being. She will not be afraid 
of applying to society as a whole the principle 
of equal opportunity which is the ruling prin- 
ciple of family life. 

On the contrary, she will welcome So- 
cialism as a parched flower welcomes the 
gentle summer rain. She will hail it with 
joy and gladness, firm in the faith that it will 
emancipate womanhood from the thralldom 
of the centuries, glorify motherhood, protect 
the home and insure to childhood its precious 
heritage of opportunity. 



THE MOTHER'S FEAR 125 

No longer the Slave of Fear, she will laugh 
Superstition to scorn and with joy take the 
gifts of the Angel. 



EPILOGUE 

SOCIALISM is most fittingly symbolized 
by the twofold character of the Spirit 
of Motherhood. 

Defending her child against attack, the hu- 
man mother matches the reckless ferocity of 
the tigress defending her cubs. The two 
mothers are sisters in their savage passion. 

But toward her child what beautiful tender- 
ness that same human mother displays ! The 
gentle kiss of the dewdrop upon the cheek 
of the rose is not more tender. 

So, toward the enemies of childhood the 
Spirit of Socialism turns with savage menace 
and defiance, and cries aloud to the Masters 
of Bread — to the Lords of Privilege and 
Power — to all the Despoilers of Little Chil- 
dren: 

" You shall not steal the bloom of health 
from the cheeks of the children! — You shall 
not darken the light of their eyes! — You 
shall not banish the laughter from their lips! 

126 



EPILOGUE 127 



— You shall not silence the songs of their 
hearts! These things you shall not do, for, 
by The Eternal! I, the Spirit of Social- 
ism, have sworn that I will not falter, nor 
pause, nor rest, nor make truce, until I have 
destroyed your cruel power and broken down 
the last barrier which stands between a hu- 
man child and its right to all the glory and 
beauty and joy of the world." 

Then, like a young and beautiful mother, 
beckoning her child and watching over it as 
it comes with eager, faltering footsteps, the 
Spirit of Socialism stands at the gateway of 
the Garden of Life, bidding the children 
enter, saying tenderly: 

u Come, little ones, here is the Garden of 
Life. Enter and pluck for yourselves the 
flowers of Life and Love and Joy and 
Beauty! They are yours! They were 
planted for you! They have been tended 
and nurtured for you through all the ages 
of human sacrifice and labor. Here, in the 
midst of the Garden, are the King's Treas- 
uries of Art and Science and Philosophy and 



128 SOCIALISM AND MOTHERHOOD 

Power. Come! Enter! I will unlock them 
for you, for they are all yours. Wander 
where you will and take freely what you willy 
for these things are your Heritage. — And 
when you are tired — when through the even- 
ing shadows you must pass out of the Gar- 
den of Life to your Rest and your Dreams — 
you shall leave more than you gathered, even 
though you know it not. — And then, when 
your footsteps are no longer heard in the Gar- 
den, and your voices are no longer mingled 
with the whisperings of the flowers, other 
children coming after you shall find that in 
your footprints flowers of unfading beauty 
bloom. They shall find the Garden of Life 
lovelier because you lingered and played in 
it; the King's Treasuries richer because you 
took from them to satisfy your needs and 
added to them new treasures of your own. — 
For thus, my little ones, the Glory of the 
Ages is kept unfailing and undimmed. — 
Thus has your Heritage been kept, and thus 
shall it be maintained for all children, For- 
ever and Forever! " 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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